Tuesday, January 09, 2024

6120 - Febrile seizures (FSs) ... (conspiracy theory fodder)


Febrile seizures were on the news recently. They are mainly a problem for young children up to 2 years old but can continue into adulthood for some people. I found a LOT of information about this and I could take up the rest of your day with reading so I'll try and give you the short version with links to the long versions.

Febrile seizures can be attributed to crib death but not most of the time. There is a monitor that can be placed on the child's foot to monitor for febrile seizures.


https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/febrile-seizures/ (not that long of an article.)

Check if it's a febrile seizure...
A febrile seizure can happen when a child has a high temperature (fever).

Your child may:

become stiff and twitch, shake, or have jerking movements
become unconscious
not respond or look at you when you talk to them
be sick or pee (wet themselves)
be sleepy, irritable, or confused for up to 1 hour afterward
Febrile seizures usually last for 2 to 3 minutes. It's rare for them to last more than 10 minutes.

They usually affect children between 6 months and 6 years old.


Preventing febrile seizures
You cannot prevent febrile seizures. They can sometimes happen when your child has an infection and a high temperature.

Febrile seizures and epilepsy...
Febrile seizures are not the same thing as epilepsy.

Children who have had a febrile seizure have a slightly increased chance of having epilepsy later in life, but this is rare.





They report that the risk of febrile seizures is increased almost sixfold on the day of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) receipt and drops off to a negligible increase thereafter. For measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), the effect is not seen until the 2nd week after receipt of the vaccine, where the risk is increased nearly threefold. They are also able to provide estimates of how many additional febrile seizures will occur as a result of vaccination with DTP (6 to 9 in 100,000) and MMR (25 to 34 in 100,000).

*** (Knowing that FS can cause death, if this isn't fodder for conspiracy theorists I don't know what is.) ***


https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2023.1186050/full (If you finish this article you will get your PhD.)

Recognition memory is impaired in children after FSs and this memory impairment can persist for at least 10 days to 1 year. Cognition impairment, including perceptual reasoning and working memory defects, were identified in patients aged 6–12 years with FSs onset at the age of 2–2.5 years old. A generation R study suggested that children with recurrent FSs might be at risk for delayed language development around 6 months after FSs. Similarly, 4-year-old children with FSs had been identified at child healthcare centers in Gothenburg. One-third of the children had at least one neurodevelopmental disorder diagnosis or marked developmental problems within areas of attention, speech and language, or general cognition. No differences were found between children with single vs. recurrent FS or simple vs. complex FSs.

*** (It seems to be associated with genetics. FS seems to run in families but not exclusively.)***


14 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

One more thing to worry about for parents.

River said...

Sounds scary. My brother has epilepsy and as a small child would have minor seizures almost every night with the onset being that tiny space of time btween being awake and being asleep.

Mike said...

Sue - Yep.

Bilbo said...

How can you tell the difference between a febrile seizure and normal behavior when watching one of Der Furor's rallies?

Bohemian said...

LMAO at Bilbo's comment, inquiring Minds need to know? *Winks* I guess one must weight the pros and cons of any Vaccines, yet to not Vaccinate your Child is probably riskier IMO and certainly could expose other Children to preventable diseases. Conspiracy Theorist Types will latch on to almost any random thing to make up their Conspiracies and truly Believe in it, regardless of facts and evidence presented. The proof rarely matters anymore to someone whose bought into misinformation or lies and any Conspiracy Theory out there. But, this is a Helpful Post to a concerned Parent wanting to know more about something that could be very serious should their Child have one of these Seizures.

Kirk said...

First I heard of this. Very informative.

(As I reread the above sentence, it's strikes me as something a bot would say, but no, it's me.)

Cloudia said...

You sure have wide ranging interests. Mike! Aloha

Kathy G said...

I read an article in the Post-Dispatch about this very topic the other day. Before then it wasn't even on my radar...and now two mentions? Talk about conspiracy theory fodder :-)

Mike said...

Bill - You can't. They're the same thing.

Dawn - What has helped identify this more was on the national news. 4 families caught incidents on crib cams.

Kirk - And this is not new to the medical field. What else don't we know?

Cloudia - It keeps life interesting.

Kathy - It's been on the national news several times now. That's what got me looking into it.

River said...

Check your spam, I must be super-glued in there.

Mike said...

River - Yep.

Mike said...

River - Maybe this will lead to help with epilepsy.

Dave Miller said...

So one of the things I do is sponsor a series of Health & Medical Clinics in indigenous areas of Oaxaca, Mexico.

In October a mom brought her young son in because he wasn't felling well. As he was waiting, he had a febrile seizure. Amazingly, my doctors went to work, got ice, drugs and whatever we had and literally, saved his life.

It's serious stuff.

Parents for sure should not rely on thoughts and prayers when the little ones are sick.

My docs all told me that had we not been there, that little boy would've died. But we got him stabilized and to a local hospital and today, his mom is hugging him every day.

Mike said...

Dave - Learning about this just makes me wonder what else we don't know about because it's not "that serious".