All sorts of illnesses may cause a

 

 

 

 

 

fever
If you have a fever, your body temperature is above 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). With a fever you often get other symptoms, such as shivering, headache or sweating. A fever is usually caused by an infection.

 

 

 

 

 

fever. In some children, a fever can trigger a seizure. Your child's body may twitch or shake.

It can be really scary to see your child having a seizure. But febrile seizures are usually over quickly, and children recover completely afterward. Most children don't even need treatment.

The kind of febrile seizures we talk about here are called simple febrile seizures. These seizures usually last only a few minutes. Most children recover completely an hour or so after the seizure stops.

But some kinds of febrile seizures last longer, and may take longer to recover from. To find out more, see Other types of seizures.

Children can get febrile seizures from when they are a few months old. They usually grow out of them by the time they're 5 or 6.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Consensus statement.
Febrile seizures: long-term management of children with fever-associated seizures.
Pediatrics. 1980; 66: 1009-1012.

 

 

 

 

 

¹ Having simple febrile seizures as a child doesn't cause any long-term health problems.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Verity CM, Greenwood R, Golding J.
Long-term intellectual and behavioural outcomes of children with febrile convulsions.
New England Journal of Medicine. 1998; 338: 1723-1728.

 

 

 

 

 

²

Febrile seizures can happen during any illness that causes a fever. The most common types of fever to trigger a febrile seizure are caused by:

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Armon K, Stephenson T, Gabriel V, et al.
Determining the common medical presenting problems to an accident and emergency department.
Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2001; 84: 390-392.

 

 

 

 

 

³

Not all children with a fever get seizures. The

 

 

 

 

 

genes
Your genes are the parts of your cells that contain instructions for how your body works. Genes are housed on chromosomes, structures that sit in the nucleus at the middle of each of your cells. You have 23 pairs of chromosomes in your normal cells, each of which has thousands of genes. You get one set of chromosomes, and all of the genes that are on them, from each of your parents.

 

 

 

 

 

genes some children inherit from their parents may make them more likely to get febrile seizures.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Iwasaki N, Nakayama J, Hamano K, et al.
Molecular genetics of febrile seizures.
Epilepsia. 2002; 43: 32-35.

 

 

 

 

 

⁴

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Offringa M, Bossuyt PM, Lubsen J, et al
Risk factors for seizure recurrence in children with febrile seizures: a pooled analysis of individual patient data from five studies
Journal of Pediatrics 1994/4; 124: 574-584

 

 

 

 

 

⁵ And changes (mutations) in some of a child's genes may also increase this risk.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Johnson EW, Dubovsky J, Rich SS, et al.
Evidence for a novel gene for familial febrile convulsions, FEB2, linked to chromosome 19p in an extended family from the Midwest.
Human Molecular Genetics. 1998; 7: 63-67.

 

 

 

 

 

⁶

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Gerard F, Pereira S, Robaglia-Schlupp A, et al.
Clinical and genetic analysis of a new multigenerational pedigree with GEFS+ (generalized epilepsy with febrile seizures plus).
Epilepsia. 2002; 43: 581-586.

 

 

 

 

 

⁷

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Nabbout R, Prud'homme JF, Herman A, et al.
A locus for simple pure febrile seizures maps to chromosome 6q22-q24.
Brain. 2002; 125: 2668-2680.

 

 

 

 

 

⁸

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Kananura C, Haug K, Sander T, et al.
A splice-site mutation in GABRG2 associated with childhood absence epilepsy and febrile convulsions.
Archives of Neurology. 2002; 59: 1137-1141.

 

 

 

 

 

⁹

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Baulac S, Gourfinkel-An I, Nabbout R, et al.
Fever, genes, and epilepsy.
Lancet Neurology. 2004; 3: 421-430.

 

 

 

 

 

¹⁰

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Audenaert D, Van Broeckhoven C, De Jonghe P, et al
Genes and loci involved in febrile seizures and related epilepsy syndromes.
Human Mutation. 2006; 27: 391–401.

 

 

 

 

 

¹¹

If you or your partner had febrile seizures when you were children, your child is more likely to have them. And if you have other children who have had febrile seizures, your child is more likely to have them. A child whose brother or sister had febrile seizures has a 1 in 5 chance of having them.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Doose H, Maurer A.
Seizure risk in offspring of individuals with a history of febrile convulsions.
European Journal Pediatrics. 1997; 156: 476-481.

 

 

 

 

 

¹² If both parents and a brother or sister had these seizures, a child has a 1 in 3 chance of having them.

Other things that make it more likely that a child will have febrile seizures, or have them more often, include:

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Knudsen FU.
Febrile seizures: treatment and outcome.
Brain Development. 1996; 18: 438-449.

 

 

 

 

 

¹³

Some

 

 

 

 

 

vaccination
A vaccination is an injection a doctor can give you to protect you from getting an infectious illness (an illness that spreads between people).

 

 

 

 

 

vaccines can cause a short fever as a side effect. Rarely, this triggers a febrile seizure. Vaccines that may cause a fever include the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (DTP) vaccine, and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. One study found that only about 2 or 3 out of 10,000 children got a febrile seizure within two weeks of having their MMR vaccination.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:
Barlow WE, Davis RL, Glasser JW.
The risk of seizures after receipt of whole cell pertussis or measles mumps and rubella vaccine.
New England Journal of Medicine. 2001; 345: 656-661.

 

 

 

 

 

¹⁴ These children all recovered fully.

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