Maternal and fetal outcome in women with epilepsy associated with neurocysticercosis.

Objective: We wanted to characterize the clinical profile and outcome of pregnancy in women with epilepsy due to neurocysticercosis (NCC) enrolled in the Indian Registry of Epilepsy and Pregnancy (IREP).

Methods: We identified all women with NCC in the IREP between January 2000 and September 2005. Age- and parity-matched patients without NCC were identified from the respective centers of IREP for comparison. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 11.

Results: There were 30 women with NCC (mean age 24.3 +/- 4 years) among 1071 registrations in the IREP. All the patients had NCC prior to the pregnancy. Fourteen (47%) NCC patients had calcified lesions and 16 (53%) had ring lesions in a CT scan of the brain. Compared to women without NCC, the NCC group had later age-at-onset of seizures (20.7 +/- 4.4 years, p = 0.008) and epilepsy (21.1 +/- 5.2 years, p = 0.01). They were more likely to have partial seizures (70% versus 30%, p = 0.002), an EEG without epileptiform abnormalities (50% versus 100%, p = 0.01), and better control of seizures before (47% versus 3%, p = 0.001) and during pregnancy (33% versus 10%, p = 0.02). Maternal and neonatal complications did not differ between the groups.

Conclusions: NCC is an uncommon cause of epilepsy in pregnant women enrolled in IREP. To be noted, as a limitation of our study, that the IREP is a hospital-based registry, which may not reflect global epilepsy characteristics of the community. The maternal and fetal outcome for NCC patients was not different from those women without NCC.