Abstracts

Rationale: Children of women with epilepsy are at increased risk for poor developmental outcomes. In the general population, the mother’s IQ is the major predictive factor of the child’s IQ. Concerns have been raised that the mother’s IQ in women with epilepsy may underestimate the genetic potential for the child because of the effects of epilepsy and related brain disorders on the mother’s IQ. We examined the relationship between the IQs in children born to women with epilepsy and those of their fathers and mothers. Methods: The NEAD Study is an ongoing prospective multicenter observational investigation, which enrolled pregnant women with epilepsy taking monotherapy carbamazepine, lamotrigine, phenytoin, or valproate. This analysis is based on 2 year old child IQ (Mental Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II), father IQ (Test of Non-verbal Intelligence-3; TONI-3), and mother IQ (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III; WAIS-III) for 131 children in whom both paternal and maternal IQs were available.Results: Significant relationships between IQ scores were found for child-mother (r=.33; p<.0001) and mother-father (r=.39; p<.0001), and to a lesser degree for child-father (r=.18; p<.04). Mean IQs (standard deviations) were child = 92 (19), mother = 101 (16), and father = 102 (16).Conclusions: Similar to the general population, the relationship of child to mother IQ is stronger than the relationship of child to father IQ. In this sample with 2 year old IQ assessments for the children, the IQ of the mothers did not underestimate the IQ of the children. Additional studies assessing child IQ at later ages are needed to confirm these findings.