"For years it's been thought that [women with epilepsy] have a higher miscarriage rate than the general population, so we wanted to see whether this is true," Julie Roth, MD, Chief Resident, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Dr. Roth presented findings here on December 1 at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Epilepsy Society (AES).
The researchers identified 114 pregnant women with epilepsy and followed the course and outcome of their pregnancies. Of the 114 women, 22 received multiple AEDs during the pregnancy and 92 received a single AED.
Of the 92 women on monotherapy, four pregnancies were electively terminated and were not included in the results. In the remainder, 72 pregnancies resulted in live births (81.8%) and 16 resulted in miscarriage or stillbirth (19.2%). The miscarriage rate in the general population is approximately 15% of pregnancies.
The researchers further examined the results based on the type of monotherapy the women received during pregnancy and discovered that women on newer AEDs were less likely to miscarry than women on older AEDs (11.9% vs 23.9%)
Dr. Roth and her colleagues will continue to enrol additional women in the study to gain more insight into the effect of older and newer AEDs on the likelihood of miscarriage and to examine the effect of multiple AED therapy on pregnancy outcome.
Reflecting on the impact of this information on daily medical practice, Dr. Roth cited the importance of quality patient education. "What I'd really like is in the future for women with epilepsy to be given a lot of good information and to realise that they're not automatically going to have either a baby with a birth defect or a miscarriage just because they have epilepsy."
Source: http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/news/852571020057CCF6852573A600817253
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