Study Assesses Anti-Seizure Medication Impact on Unborn Children.

2001 FEB 1 - (NewsRx.com) -- Medical College of Georgia researchers want to know if the medicines mothers-to-be with epilepsy must take to control seizures have a negative, lasting impact on their babies' developing brains.

The study will follow 285 women taking one of the three most commonly prescribed antiseizure medications from their first trimester until their children are several years old. Researchers want to determine what impact phenytoin (Dilantin), carbamazepine (Tegretol), and valproate (Depakote) have on the children's ability to think and learn.

"A really important aspect of this study is to find out if there is a difference between these drugs. Are some of these drugs better for the child long-term than other drugs?" said Dr. Kimford J. Meador, MCG Section of Behavioral Neurology and principal investigator on the $6 million, five-year study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. "If that's true, then we will want women to try to use the drugs which have reduced adverse effects. It would dramatically alter how we prescribe drugs. But right now we don't know if it's true.

"We do know that the vast majority of women with epilepsy have healthy children," he continued. "We are talking about a relatively small increased risk, but we want to reduce that risk as much as possible. We want them to have the same lack of risk other children have."

Meador emphasized that most women with epilepsy can have healthy children and that they should continue taking their medication while pregnant. "In a woman who has significant seizures, the risk from the seizures themselves is worse than the risk of the drugs," Meador said. "The number one reason for miscarriage late in pregnancy for women with epilepsy is trauma [resulting from a seizure]."

But he wants to objectively assess whether these drugs, which control seizures by reducing neuronal excitability in the mother, impact normal nerve growth and connections in her developing baby's brain. "During development, that excitability may be very important in terms of how nerves grow and connect," Meador said.

Also, development may be impacted by free radicals released by these drugs that bind to protein in the body's basic building blocks of DNA and RNA. "The body typically can ...