Relationship between Sedative Antihistamines and the Duration of Febrile Seizures

Abstract

Some studies have shown that sedative antihistamines prolong febrile seizure duration. Although the collective evidence is still mixed, the Japanese Society of Child Neurology released guidelines in 2015 that contraindicated the use of sedative antihistamines in patients with febrile seizure. Focused on addressing limitations of previous studies, we conducted a cross-sectional study to evaluate the relationship between febrile seizure duration and the use of sedative antihistamines. Data were collected from patients who visited St. Luke's International Hospital due to febrile seizure between August 2013 and February 2016. Patients were divided into groups based on their prescribed medications: sedative antihistamine, nonsedative antihistamine, and no antihistamine. Seizure duration was the primary outcome and was examined using multivariate analyses. Of the 426 patients included, sedative antihistamines were administered to 24 patients. The median seizure duration was approximately 3 minutes in all three groups. There was no statistical difference in the bivariate (p = 0.422) or multivariate analyses (p = 0.544). Our results do not support the relationship between sedative antihistamine use and prolonged duration of febrile seizure. These results suggest that the use of antihistamines may be considered for patients with past history of febrile seizure, when appropriate.

Keywords

antihistamine - seizure duration - status epilepticus

Location of the Study

Data collection was performed at the Department of Pediatrics, St. Luke's International Hospital.

Author Contributions

A.D. was the principal investigator and designed the study, identified the subjects, and drafted the manuscript. S.T., M.Y., M.O., and I.K. conceived the study, and assisted in the design and implementation of the study. K.H., K.Y.U., Y.I. contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the data. G.Y., A.M., and H.K. provided critical revision of the manuscript for intellectual content. All authors reviewed the final draft of the manuscript and edited for content accuracy.

Ethical Approval

The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of St. Luke's International Hospital and was conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki (approval number: 17-R106).

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