Active clinical trials for "Seizures, Febrile"

Febrile seizures (FS) are the most common neurological disorder in chilhood. The etiology of FN is still the subject of numerous studies and it is known that it can depend on genetic predisposition.

The actual recommendations for infants aged 3 to 12 months presented with first episode of Febrile Convulsions highly recommend performing lumbar puncture in order to rule out Bacterial Meningitis. On the other hand, recent studies in the era of anti Pneumococcal vaccination arise the question if in the presence of a normal physical examination those recommendations are still relevant. The purpose of this study is to summarized retrospectively the clinical records of all the infants admitted to the pediatric wards in the ten years period since 2000 to 2010 in order to record the incidence of Bacterial Meningitis among infants admitted with the First episode of Febrile Convulsions.

Febrile seizures(FS) are the most common neurological disorder in chilhood and are a great stress for parents due to their dramatic clinical appearance. Using HRC-test(test for determination of homozygously recessive characteristics in humans) we analyzed presence, distribution, and individual combination of 20 selected genetically controlled morpho-physiological traits among FS patients and control to determine a possible deviation in the homozygosity level and genetic loads in the group of affected children and whether there is a predisposition to the occurrence of FS.

Few studies dealing with the risk of infectious of nervous system and the utility of lumbar puncture and of emergent neuroimaging among patients with simple febrile seizure between 3 and 11 months age and with complex seizure has been reported. None of these studies was multicentric. Recommendations about management of these children are heterogeneous. The investigators aim to study by an observational retrospective multicentric study the rate of infectious of central nervous system among patients with a complex febrile seizure and among patients between 3 and 11 months age with simple febrile seizure.

In many fields of medicine, except seizure disorders, blood biomarkers have captured an integrated part of diagnostic decision making, including copeptin, the surrogate marker of vasopressin release. There are strong arguments to hypothesize circulating copeptin is elevated in epilepsy, especially in generalized seizures such as fever seizures (FS), and that copeptin is predictive for complexity and relapse at least in FS. Although long-term morbidity and mortality are both low in FS, there is high anxiety among parents because of a lack of criterions to identify children at risk for relapse. Copeptin may fill this gap by adding important diagnostic and prognostic information. Eventually, less children may receive needlessly over years fever drugs or anti-epileptic drugs.

Febrile seizures occur in 2-5% of the population and are typically limited to children between 3 months and 5 years-of-age. The pathophysiological link between increased body temperature and increased seizure susceptibility is unsolved in humans. In a mouse model it has been shown that young animals had a tendency to hyperventilate thereby causing intra-cerebral hypocapnia / alkalosis and a decrease of their seizure threshold. This effect was not observed in older animals. Redressing the pCO2 (carbon dioxide partial pressure) by breathing carbon dioxide enriched air instantly stopped the seizures. In this study the investigators want to investigate the respiratory physiology in children with febrile seizures and compare it to children who have fever but did not have febrile seizures. The investigators hypothesize that in children with febrile seizures the rising body temperature triggers a larger increase of respiratory rate (hyperventilation) and subsequent drop in pCO2 levels. This study could provide the basic physiological data for an interventional trial to test the efficacy of carbon dioxide inhalation to interrupt febrile seizures.

With the use of molecular methods new viruses have been detected in respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts of both patients and asymptomatic subjects in recent years. The clinical importance of these viruses has not been adequately studied. The aim of this study is to use molecular methods to detect viruses in upper respiratory tract and gastrointestinal tract of children with acute bronchiolitis, acute gastroenteritis and febrile convulsions and to try to correlate the severity of clinical picture with the amount of viruses present in clinical samples. The investigators will also try to detect the increase in specific antibodies in paired sera.

Febrile seizures are one of the most common clinical diseases in pediatric neurology. It occurs between 6 months and 6 years of age and occurs in ~2-5% of children. According to the age, frequency, duration, and type of seizures FS is divided into simple febrile seizures and complex febrile seizures Differentiation between febrile seizures and non-ictal events associated with fever such as shivering or dizziness is challenging. Therefore, precise diagnosis of FS after paroxysmal episodes associated with fever is often hindered by the lack of an objective biomarker With the widespread application of technologies, such as molecular biology, in medicine, some biomarkers for predicting or diagnosing FS have attracted attention. Imuekemhe et al in 1989 and 1996 found that lactic acid in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid of children with FS was significantly increased . Arginin-vasopressin hormone AVP released by the pituitary gland, has been shown to be involved in the thermoregulatory response to fever and convulsions Although AVP is unstable in the peripheral blood and, therefore, unsuited for diagnostic use the C-terminal portion of the AVP precursor copeptin has been recognized as a robust marker of AVP secretion . Wellman et al. found that the serum copeptin and Von Willebrand factor of children with FS were significantly higher than those of the control group .