A Hospital-Based Study on Febrile Seizure and Iron Deficiency Anemia at A Tertiary Care Centre in Bihar

Abstract

Introduction: Febrile seizure is the most common convulsive disorder in children which strikes 2% to 5% of children between 3 to 60 months of age. Some of the recent studies have reported that iron deficiency could be a risk factor for febrile seizure because the latter is more common in children under two years and iron deficiency anemia is also common in children of the same age. Here, we compared the iron status of children with febrile seizures and controls to investigate the association between iron status and febrile seizures in children admitted in Nalanda Medical College & Hospital, Patna, Bihar. Methodology: This prospective case control study was performed between October 2020 to September 2021. The study population consisted of 100 patients aged 6 to 60 months admitted in the Department of Pediatrics of Nalanda Medical College & Hospital, Patna, Bihar. 30 children with febrile seizures and 30 controls with febrile illness only were included in the study. The parents of all patients provided written informed consent for inclusion in the study, which was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee. Results: The majority of FS were noted in the 6 to 24 months age group, which included more than 50% of the study subjects. Upper Respiratory Infection (URI) was the most common cause of febrile illness in our study. The mean temperature (measured from axilla) in the case group during the FS attack was 100.9 ± 2.1 °F which was significantly higher compared to the control group which was 98.2 ± 1.1 °F (p-value <0.05). Conclusion: Based on our study, there is strong evidence that parameters such as gender, peak body temperature, underlying cause of fever, & microcytic hypochromic anemia are the risk factors in occurrence of the first febrile seizure episode.