Healthcare professionals prescribe some drugs such as lamotrigine and levetiracetam to treat people with epilepsy. But previous studies have shown that these drugs affect the creative thinking of children if their mothers take them during pregnancy. In a recent study, researchers have found that these drugs do not affect creative thinking of children.
This study was published in Neurology. In this study, researchers involved two groups of children such as children whose mother has epilepsy and whose mother did not have epilepsy during pregnancy. These groups consisted of 251 and 73 children respectively. The women who had epilepsy during pregnancy took either lamotrigine or levetiracetam.
In this study, researchers tested these children at the age of 4.5 years to understand their creative thinking. They checked their fluency, thinking ability and flexibility. They gave them some shapes or figures and asked them to make a drawing using them. When researchers observed the collected data, they found that there was no difference in creativity in children of both groups. They also noticed that the creativity of children was same among children whose mothers had different levels of these drugs in their blood. Researchers also conducted an executive function test to understand their ability to plan and manage multiple tasks. When observing the results, researchers noticed that the children whose mothers had higher levels of these drugs during the third trimester of pregnancy showed poorer performance in this test. This was mainly seen in those whose mothers took levetiracetam.
One of the researchers said that it is very important to understand these drugs while prescribing them to pregnant women. It cannot affect children’s creative thinking. But higher levels of levetiracetam during the third trimester of the pregnancy can affect the children’s ability to perform multiple tasks. This study also has some limitations so there is a need for further research.
The result of this study clearly shows that epilepsy drugs do not affect children’s creative thinking. But higher levels can affect them. So, healthcare professionals should not prescribe higher dosage of lamotrigine and levetiracetam drugs during pregnancy. They should make some effective strategies for this to reduce this risk.
