Association between Iron Deficiency Anemia and Febrile Seizure: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Febrile seizure is the most common convulsive disorder in children and different studies reported controversial results about the association between this disorder and iron deficiency, in some studies, iron level in children with febrile seizures is higher than control and in some reports is less than the control group. So, we systematically reviewed all the studies in this field and analyzed their findings using meta-analysis methods. This review and meta-analysis was conducted by iron and fever keywords on articles published in the databases Pubmed, Googlescholar and Federated search of medical digital library includes a variety of international databases. All articles by the end of March 2012 were studied. Case-control studies were selected and quality assessment of studies were surveyed by STROB criteria and information requirements, including the status of iron deficiency anemia, iron levels and ferritin level of eligible studies were extracted and analyzed by Comprehensive Meta Analysis Version 2.0 software and The Forest and Funnel chart was drawn. Finally 11 studies included 1357 children with febrile seizure and 1347 children in the control group were evaluated. The odds ratio of iron deficiency anemia in children with febrile seizure in comparison to the control group was 1.27 (OR = 1.27, CI95%: 1.03 -1.56). Ferritin level was not significant between the two groups (p=0.022), but iron levels in the two groups was significant (p=0.000). Iron deficiency considered as a risk factor in the incidence of febrile seizure and interventional studies can be helpful to confirm this hypothesis.