Are seizures more frequent in asthmatic children?

ABSTRACT

Asthma and epilepsy have been suspected to be related to each other for a long time. To determine the frequency of seizures occurring in all asthmatic children referred to the teaching hospitals affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) for two consecutive years, we conducted the following study. 16 out of 202 cases had previous history of non-febrile seizures (7.9%). Five patients (2.5%) had only a single seizure, and the remaining (5.4%) had recurrent attacks. All cases had generalized tonic-clonic type of seizures. One of the cases had a prolonged seizure (status epilepticus) lasting for more than 30 minutes. We concluded that the occurrence of seizure in our asthmatic patients was far more frequent than that in the general population.