The relationship between iron deficiency anemia and febrile seizures in children aged 6 months to 5 years referred to imam sajjad hospital in yasouj

Febrile seizures (FS) are the most common cause of seizure in children. In order to prevent FS and their recurrence, the recognition of the related factors to recurrence of FS is important. According to the high prevalence of FS and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) in children and that IDA is a possible risk factor for FS, as well as controversies in previous studies in this field, in this study, the relationship between iron deficiency anemia and FS in children was investigated.

This is a case-control study that investigates the relationship between febrile seizures with anemia in 150 patients aged six months to five years with fever who were admitted to Imam Sajjad Yasouj Hospital, from April to August of 2014. In this study, 75 patients with febrile seizures (case group) and 75 febrile patients without seizures (control group) were compared. Cause of fever (urinary infection, gastrointestinal infections, upper respiratory infection, lower respiratory infection and other causes), Information about blood cell count (white blood cell (WBC) and red blood cell (RBC), hemoglobin (HB), mean red blood cell volume (MCV) and serum ferritin level in patients with hemoglobin below 11 were recorded.

The mean age of the study population was 21.4 14 months. 34.7% of the study population were girls and 65.3% were boys. In this study, 10.7% of the cases and 8% of the controls had IDA. Although the prevalence of IDA was higher in the FS group, this difference was not significant (P=0.58). Also, HB and MCV were not significantly different in the two groups (P=0.49, P=0.69). In addition, the mean serum ferritin level in the FS group with anemia and the FS group with anemia did not show a statistically significant difference (P=0.94).

According to the result of this study, IDA is not a risk factor for seizures in febrile children.