Thyroid Dysfunction in Epileptic Children and Association with Antiepileptic Drugs in Sudan

There are limited and conflicting data about the effect of antiepileptic drugs on thyroid gland in children. The objective of this study to investigate the effects of TSH and thyroid hormone in children receiving the valproate, carbamazepine. Cross sectional case control study was conducted at omdurman children hospital which is general pediatrics hospital with many referred clinics including neurology clinic, ahmed gasam children hospital is general pediatrics hospital, Abraham malak hospital during the period from March to May 2015. In this study 100 children Sudanese patient have epilepsy and receiving, antiepileptic drugs for at least 1 years and diagnosed as epileptic based on EEG (case) and 50 sudanese children as (control). The study showed that children use carbamazepine drugs there was significant increase in mean concentration of TSH comparison with control groups with p-value 0.000 and significant decrease in mean concentration of T4 comparison with control groups with p-value 0.000 and significant minor decrease of T3 comparison with control groups with p-value 0.002 , and children use valporate group showed was significant increase in mean concentration of TSH comparison with control groups with p-value 0.000 and significant decrease in mean concentration of T4 comparison with control groups with p-value 0.000 and significant normal of T3 comparison with control groups with p-value 0.000. Our data suggest that all antiepileptic drugs studied had varying degrees of deleterious effects on thyroid function.