The Association Between Serum Zinc Level And Febrile Seizures In Childhood

Abstract

Background: Febrile seizure defined by national institute of health as “ an event in infancy or childhood usually occurring between 3 months to 5 years but without evidence of intracranial infection or defined cause for seizure”. Simple febrile seizures are most common form and are single, brief and generalized. Complex febrile seizure is focal, last longer than 15 minutes or include more than one seizure associated with febrile illness. Peak age of febrile seizure is 18 months with recurrent episode occurring in one third of the patients. Serum Zinc levels are shown to be low in febrile seizure in some studies. Hence we want to study this association in our study group.

Objective : To study the association between serum zinc levels and febrile seizures in childhood.

Method : It is a prospective case control study. All children with febrile seizure between 6 months and 5 years from Pediatric ward of B.L.D.E.U’s Shri. B.M.Patil medical college hospital & research centre were taken as cases and compared with age, weight (nutrition) matched 15 children with and 15 without fever as controls. Detailed clinical history comprising of age, sex, birth weight, present weight, developmental mile stones, body temperature at admission, cause of fever, history of recent zinc supplementation, family history of febrile seizure as well as details of seizure history, duration, frequency, type of seizure (simple or complex). xi All children underwent detailed physical and systemic examination. Serum zinc level was measured using zinc kit by colorimetric method between cases and controls. Normal serum zinc levels is 60-120 µgm/dl. Results: Out of 30 cases, 20 had low serum zinc levels and 10 had normal values. Out of 30 controls, 15 controls with fever, 3 had low serum zinc levels, 10 had normal values and 2 had high values. 15 controls without fever, 2 had low values and 13 had normal values.

Conclusion: Serum zinc levels were found to be low in children with febrile seizure and further zinc supplementation of these children for > 1 month may reduce the recurrence rate of febrile seizure.