Epilepsy Drug Tied to Defects

A drug used to control epilepsy can apparently cause birth defects if women take the medication while they are pregnant.

Carbamazepine apparently can cause birth defects ranging from malformed heads, faces and fingernails to mental retardation, Dr. Kenneth Jones of UC San Diego reported last week.

Carbamazepine is made by Ciba-Geigy Corp. of Summit, N.J., and sold as Tegretol. A Ciba-Geigy spokeswoman said the company was aware the drug can cause birth defects and has labeled the drug accordingly.

In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Jones and his colleagues studied eight children whose mothers took the drug while they were in the womb and another 72 women who took the drug while pregnant.

All of the first eight children were born with some type of deformity, the researchers said. Among 35 children born to the 72 other women, 20% were mentally retarded, 26% had deformed fingernails and 11% had head or face malformations.

Despite the findings, Jones said women will probably continue to take the drug because the risk of birth defects is still probably lower than from having a seizure while pregnant.