Relationship between iron deficiency anemia and febrile seizures in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis
By: Byung Ok Kwak, Kyungmin Kim, Soo-Nyung Kim and Ran Lee
https://www.seizure-journal.com/article/S1059-1311(16)30325-9/fulltext

For my case presentation, I presented a 16 year old female who was advised to go to the ER due to abnormal laboratory results. Her hemoglobin and hematocrit were 5.6 and 23.3, respectively. It was believed that this was caused by her abnormally heavy menstrual cycle. I wanted to find a journal article that dealt with the prevalence of menorrhagia causing anemia, however, I came across a more interesting one that looked at the relationship between iron deficiency anemia and febrile seizures. Also there had been some studies suggesting a possible relationship, however, others had conflicting results. The main objective of the study was to identify if the two variables are associated. This article was a systematic review and meta-analysis that looked for articles that were case-controls, included subjects between 3 months to 6 years old with febrile seizures, and iron deficiency anemia incidence was assessed. A total of 17 articles were included, which included 2416 children with febrile seizures, and 2387 without. Iron deficiency anemia was seen in 35.2% of the cases, and 29.6% of the controls, showing a significant association of iron deficiency anemia in patients with febrile seizures. Iron deficiency anemia that was diagnosed with ferritin levels and MCV, showed significant relationship with febrile seizures; however diagnosis with serum iron levels did not have a significant association. The study concluded that “IDA is associated with an increased risk of FS in children aged 3 months–6 years”. This study, however, did admit to the limitation of not including randomized control trials, as well as insufficient quality of some of the studies.
The peak ages between iron deficiency anemia and febrile seizures are similar. The study explained that iron is an important nutrient for proper growth, and that a deficiency of it can lead to neurological issues, problems with iron metabolism, and neurotransmitter activity issues. Therefore it may pose as a risk factor for febrile seizures.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.