Scientists led by Kimford Meador from Stanford University conducted clinical trials and concluded that taking modern antiepileptic drugs — lamotrigine and levetiracetam — during pregnancy does not affect the verbal development of children up to the age of six. Multicenter prospective non-randomized trials within the MONEAD study involved 387 women and their children. 298 mothers suffered from epilepsy, 78 percent of them took these drugs separately or in combination during pregnancy. The verbal abilities of children were assessed on average at the age of 6.4 years. The results were published in JAMA Neurology.
It turned out that verbal skills did not differ significantly between women without epilepsy and those taking medications for it (p = 0.64). At the same time, cognitive and behavioral indicators in children were significantly higher in both groups if their mothers took folic acid in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
