Declining malformation rates with changed antiepileptic drug prescribing

T Tomson; D Battino; E Bonizzoni; J Craig; D Lindhout; E Perucca; A Sabers; SV Thomas; F Vajda

Journal article

Declining malformation rates with changed antiepileptic drug prescribing

T Tomson, D Battino, E Bonizzoni, J Craig, D Lindhout, E Perucca, A Sabers, SV Thomas, F Vajda

Neurology | LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS | Published : 2021

DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000008001

Abstract

Objective Changes in prescribing patterns of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) in pregnant women with epilepsy would be expected to affect the risk of major congenital malformations (MCMs). To test this hypothesis, we analyzed data from an international pregnancy registry (EURAP). Methods EURAP is an observational prospective cohort study designed to determine the risk of MCMs after prenatal exposure to AEDs. The Cochrane-Armitage linear trend analysis was used to assess changes in AED treatment, prevalence of MCMs, and occurrence of generalized tonic-clonic seizures (GTCs) over 3 time periods: 2000-2005 (n = 4,760), 2006-2009 (n = 3,599), and 2010-2013 (n = 2,949). Results There were pronounced ch..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Emilio Perucca Author

Frank Vajda Author

Grants

Awarded by Netherlands Epilepsy Foundation (NEF)

Funding Acknowledgements

EURAP has received financial support from the following pharmaceutical companies: Bial, Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, and UCB, from Netherlands Epilepsy Foundation (NEF) grant 03-18 (Lindhout), and from Stockholm County Council, ALF (Tomson). The sponsors had no influence on the conduct of the study, analysis, interpretation, writing of the manuscript, or the decision to publish the results.