A study has found that a drug taken by women whose wellness is affected by epilepsy could affect their baby’s cognitive wellbeing. According to the US researchers, the epilepsy medication, valproate, has a long-term impact on children’s IQ.
In 2009, a group of three-year-olds, whose mothers had taken valproate during pregnancy, were found to have below-par cognitive skills. This led the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a warning about gestational use of the drug. More recently, researchers in the United States have carried out follow-up tests among the same group of children, now at the age of six, the results of which have been published in the journal The Lancet Neurology.
The new study found that children born to mothers who had used valproate in pregnancy had an IQ that was seven to 10 points lower than children whose mothers had used one of three other epilepsy drugs; carbamazepine, lamotrigine, and phenytoin. Valproate also affected child verbal and memory skills, and the higher the dosage take, the greater the IQ discrepancy.
However, if your infant has been exposed to any of these drugs, it doesn’t mean that that you’ve failed at family wellness before you’ve even begun. The study also found that child IQ may improve with age, and if expectant mothers also take folic acid supplements. This is an important discovery, because valproate is, for some people, the only drug that can control their epilepsy.
According to Kimford Meador at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, ‘Valproate usage during pregnancy has a significant negative effect on children’s IQ, which lasts beyond their earliest years. IQ at age six is strongly predictive of adult IQ and school performance, so our research suggests that valproate use during pregnancy is likely to have long-term negative effects on a child’s IQ and other cognitive abilities.
Meador concluded by saying, ‘For many antiepileptic drugs, there is simply no research available on their effects on women and their children during pregnancy, and given that many women do not have the option of stopping medication during pregnancy, more research in this area is urgently needed.’
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