Febrile seizures and epilepsy

An epileptic seizure is seen in about 3% of all pediatric febrile seizure patients. This risk is lower in children with simple febrile seizures but increases for complex febrile seizures, depending on the number of complexity factors, from 4% to 49%. Febrile seizures precede various forms of epilepsy in the majority of cases. Newborns with benign familial neonatal seizures have a higher prevalence of febrile seizures. Generalized epilepsies with febrile seizures plus (GEFS+) are important familial epileptic syndromes caused by channelopathies (voltage gated sodium channels and GABAA receptors). GEFS+ is characterised by heterogeneous clinical phenotypes ranging from mild febrile seizures to severe myoclonic epilepsies of infancy (SMEI). There is also a slowing of the psychomotor development in SMEI patients.