New Delhi, Dec 3 || A team of US scientists has deemed two commonly used antiseizure medications -- lamotrigine and levetiracetam -- safe to use during pregnancy.
Epilepsy -- a chronic neurological condition -- is characterised by sudden numbness, body stiffness, shaking, fainting, speech difficulty, and involuntary urination. While medicines are known to help most women to lead normal lives, in some cases, they can cause harm to the foetus.
To understand, researchers from Stanford University evaluate the drugs’ long-term effects on children born to mothers who took one or both medications for epilepsy while pregnant. They documented outcomes at age 6 from 298 children of women with epilepsy and a comparison group of 89 children of healthy women.
The results, published in JAMA Neurology, confirm that lamotrigine and levetiracetam offer a safe alternative to older antiseizure medications such as valproate that are known to raise the risk of autism and lower IQ as well as impairment to other cognitive abilities in children.
The team found that verbal ability at age 6 was normal in children whose mothers had used one or both of the drugs during pregnancy.
They also found no statistically significant differences in a variety of other cognitive and psychosocial outcomes in 6-year-olds.