An Investigation of Serum Irisin Levels in Children Experiencing Convulsive Seizures

Background: Seizures are classified as febrile or afebrile in children according to the body temperature and age. The hormone irisin is known to increase with exercise and thermogenesis. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of type and duration of seizures involving muscular contraction due to neuronal stimuli in children with seizures on irisin levels. Methods: The physical, demographic and seizure characteristics of 45 patients and 40 control cases were recorded. Sera were collected from patients and control cases, initially during application for admission to hospital and then secondly within 8 - 24 hours while subjects were experiencing seizures. Results: Twenty of the patients with seizures were febrile and 25 were afebrile. There was no difference between the patient and control groups in terms of sex or weight and height percentiles. There was no statistically significant difference in irisin levels between the patient and control groups (P > 0.05) but a significant difference was observed between initial and second irisin values in the patient group (P = 0.03). Conclusions: Irisin has been reported to increase after aerobic exercise lasting 45 minutes. The mean duration of seizure was 9.3 minutes in our patient group and the suggestion that lactate elevation in patients undergoing seizures is used by the anaerobic pathway may explain why irisin did not increase in these patients. Irisin does not increase in the early stage in patients undergoing seizures, but significant increases occur in 8 - 24 hours. More comprehensive studies are needed on this subject.