Familial History and Recurrence of Febrile Seizures; a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective

Febrile seizure (FS) as the most common form of seizures in childhood, affects 2-5% of all children across the world. The present study reviews available reports on FS recurrence frequency and evaluates its associated risk factors in Iran.

Methods

We searched the Persian database such as: SID, MagIran, Medlip, Irandoc, Iranmedex as well as English databases PubMed, ISI, and Scopus. Random effects models were used to calculate 95% confidence intervals. Meta regression was introduced to explore the heterogeneity between studies.

Findings

The overall FS recurrence rate was 20.9% 95% confidence interval (CI): 12.3-29.5%]. The frequency of FS simple and complex types was 69.3% (95% CI: 59.5-79.0) and 25.3% (95% CI: 19.6-31.0), respectively. A positive familial history of 28.8% (95% CI: 19.3-38.4%) was observed for childhood FS including 36.2% (95% CI: 27.3-39.6%) for the simple and 29.4% (95% CI: 23.1-33.5%) for the complex type. The heterogeneity of recurrent FS was significantly affected by sample size (P=0.026).

Conclusion

Almost one-third of FS children had a positive familial history. The increased risk of recurrence in patients with symptomatic seizures needs to be fully considered by parents, physicians, nurses and health policy makers.