Antiepileptic drug polytherapy in pregnant women with epilepsy

Abstract

Objective: To study seizure control and rates of foetal malformation in pregnancies of women with epilepsy treated with antiepileptic drug polytherapy. Methods: The use of conventional statistical methods to analyse the Australian Pregnancy Register records of 1810 pregnancies in women with epilepsy, 508 treated with antiepileptic drug polytherapy. Results: Polytherapy-treated pregnancies were less often seizure free than monotherapy-treated ones, for both focal (36.0% vs 51.9%: P <.05) and primary generalized epilepsies (41.1% vs 69.3%; P <.05). Drug combinations with dissimilar and similar mechanisms of action achieved similar rates of seizure freedom during pregnancy (36.3% vs 38.3%). The..