Epilepsy & contraception

Some anti-seizure drugs can reduce the effectiveness of the contraceptive pill, ‘morning after’ pill and contraceptive implants. These anti-seizure drugs, known as ‘enzyme inducers’, include carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, phenobarbitone, phenytoin, primidone and topiramate.

They cause the contraceptive hormones to be removed more quickly from the body. For this reason, girls taking these drugs are usually given contraceptive pills with a higher level of oestrogen and advised about other methods of contraception. This should be discussed with a family planning doctor.

Some anti-seizure drugs can affect foetal development, so changes may be made to medication and doses prior to a pregnancy. For this reason pregnancies should be planned well in advance and monitored from an early stage. It is important that all teenagers are given information about the effects of AEDs on contraception and pregnancy before they become sexually active.

NB Young Epilepsy are currently reviewing our information portfolio which will be updated in October 2023.

Also in this section

Causes of epilepsy

The causes of epilepsy generally falls into three groups; genetic, structural/metabolic or unknown

Diagnosing epilepsy

Getting a diagnosis of epilepsy can often take some time. Only until there have been two or more seizures that a diagnosis of epilepsy will be considered

Epilepsy treatment

The main aim of treating epilepsy is to improve the person's quality of life by preventing seizures but also causing minimum side effects

Epilepsy seizures

An epileptic seizure happens because of a disruption of the electrical activity in the brain

Epilepsy syndromes

A syndrome is a group of signs and symptoms which, if they occur together, can suggest a particular condition