Utah Researchers Locate Childhood Fever Seizure Gene Researchers have located a gene that causes hereditary fever-related seizures in the infants and young children of one Utah family, according to a report in this month's Annals of Neurology , the scientific journal of the American Neurological Association and the Child Neurology Society.
Febrile seizures are the most common form of childhood seizures.
In the United States, about 3 to 4 infants or small children out of 100 will have one or more convulsive episodes during periods of fever. During febrile seizures, nerve cells in the brain fire electrical impulses much faster than usual, often leading to muscular convulsions and loss of consciousness. For the vast majority of children, the febrile seizures do not cause permanent brain injury and occur only once or a few times. In this Utah family, the researchers found that 21 of the 48 members participating in the study had experienced one or more febrile seizures during early childhood. Eight of the 21 went on to suffer other seizure disorders.