THURSDAY, April 17 (HealthDay News) -- Mothers who breast-feed
while on certain seizure medications do not appear to harm their
children's cognitive development, a new study finds.
"Our early findings show breast-feeding during anti-epilepsy
drug treatment doesn't appear to have a negative impact on a
child's cognitive abilities," study author Kimford Meador, of the
University of Florida at Gainesville, said in a prepared statement.
"However, more research is needed to confirm our findings, and
women should use caution due to the limitations of our study."
The study was expected to be presented Thursday at the American
Academy of Neurology annual meeting, in Chicago.
The cognitive development of 187 2-year-old children whose
mothers were taking the epilepsy drugs lamotrigine, carbamazepine,
phenytoin or valproate were tested in the study. Of these children,
41 percent were breast-fed.
The children of mothers who breast-fed while on the epilepsy
medications actually scored consistently higher on IQ tests than
those children in the study who were not breast-fed. However, the
results were not significantly different after adjusting for the
mother's intelligence as the children who were breast-fed also had
higher IQs.
While animal studies have shown that some anti-epilepsy drugs
can cause cells death in immature brains, Meador said beta
estradiol, which is the mother's sex hormone, is thought to prevent
that from occurring.
The study will continue and, ultimately, examine the effects of
in utero anti-epilepsy drug exposure on children at 6 years
old.
More information
The Epilepsy Foundation has more about
epilepsy.
