Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0009952 (febrile convulsions)
 1,215 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Neuron-specific enolase (NSE) has recently proved to be a useful marker of neuron damage. We determined NSE levels in the serum and CSF of 117 children with various neurological disorders (43 with febrile convulsion, 25 with seizure disorder, 32 with meningitis, 3 with brain tumor, 2 with Reye syndrome, 3 with congenital CNS malformation and 9 with other disorders). The purpose of this study is to assess the potential usefulness of NSE in diagnosis and prognosis. Twenty CSF and serum samples of children without neurological problem served as a control. The mean values of the NSE levels in the CSF and serum of the control group were 5.00 +/- 1.65 ng/ml and 8.34 +/- 4.40 ng/ml respectively. The peak values were found in cases with brain tumor. A patient died of Reye syndrome didn't show a very high level of NSE in the serum or CSF. However, we found significant differences in NSE levels between the patients with febrile convulsions and those with seizure disorders (non-febrile, abnormal EEG). Most of our patients with febrile convulsions were cases of simple febrile convulsion, and their NSE levesin the CSF and serum were 4.55 +/- 1.00 and 8.06 +/- 3.18 ng/ml. Cases with non-febrile seizure disorders had significantly higher level of NSE in both CSF and serum (P less than 0.05). Patients with purulent meningitis usually had higher levels than those with aseptic meningitis. Our study can be summarized thus: 1. A normal level of NSE does not exclude severe neuron damage.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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PMID:Studies of neuron-specific enolase levels in serum and cerebrospinal fluid of children with neurological diseases. 234 56

Pertussis vaccine was originally accused of provoking a short latency explosive encephalopathy with serious mental and physical consequences. Reports of recurrence of encephalopathy, worse after each dose, strengthened the notion of causality. Anecdotal associations can be no more than hypothesis-generating. With no distinctive clinical or pathological neurology, a major epidemiological study was necessary to answer the question "Does whooping cough vaccine cause brain damage in children"? The British national Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) seemed to indicate that very rarely the answer was yes. Unfortunately the NCES confused disorders which might be notified as "encephalopathy" with actual brain damaging events, imaging a continuum of injury. Close scrutiny of the individual cases, as was possible during the recent test case in the High Court of London, shows that all the temporally associated cases with permanent sequelae had either viral encephalitis or Reye's syndrome. No cases were unexplained. There was an apparent excess of febrile convulsions in the first 24 hours, but all these children were normal at follow-up. The short latency explosive encephalopathy with adverse outcome predicted by the earlier case series did not occur. The NCES gives no support to the idea that pertussis vaccine damages children's brains. Contra-indications to DTP should be the same as to DT.
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PMID:A neurologist looks at neurological disease temporally related to DTP immunization. 307 4

Paracetamol is one of the most commonly used legal drugs in the western world. Its availability is good, cost is low, and its uses include 'over-the-counter' (OTC) distribution, primary care prescribed therapy, secondary care 'post-operative' application and emergency treatment. Stated benefits of paracetamol include: the drug's analgesic effects, preference to aspirin in avoidance of Reye's syndrome, good patient tolerance, and iatrogenic complications are infrequent and minor. Stated cautions include hepatotoxic effect following minor doses and short duration use and users may incur compromised immune integrity. This paper is concerned with paracetamol's role in fever management. Public concern regarding, in particular, childhood fever and febrile convulsions is largely unwarranted. Despite paracetamol's reputation as a popular fever-reducing agent the drug is poorly effective in the control of febrility and febrile convulsions showing no important advantage compared with placebo. Paracetamol is probably grossly over-prescribed for fever management and its value more perceived than real. Greater efforts are needed to inform patients of the natural benefits of the biological strategy of fever and of the highly limited and in some cases contraindicated use of paracetamol in fever management.
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PMID:Paracetamol and fever management. 1905 73

Despite the decrease in Reye syndrome after the discontinuation of aspirin, acute encephalopathy (non-Reye syndrome type) has been continually reported in Japan. Recent studies suggested that the thermolabile phenotype of carnitine palmitoyltransferase II (CPT II) variation [F352C] was closely related to the pathomechanism of influenza-associated encephalopathy (IAE) in Japanese, causing mitochondrial ATP utilization failure during periods of high fever, resulting in brain edema. So, we analyzed CPT II polymorphism and peripheral blood ATP levels as a signal of "energy crisis" in 12 and 10 patients with acute encephalopathy, respectively. Out of the 12 patients with acute encephalopathy, six showed thermolabile CPT II variants [F352C], and of these six, two patients died in spite of intensive care. In contrast, the remaining six patients with no thermolabile CPT II variant [F352C] showed a relatively mild clinical course. Blood ATP levels of the 10 patients in the acute phase of encephalopathy were significantly lower than those during the convalescent phase and also those of patients with febrile seizure status. Our data suggest that the thermolabile F352C CPT II variant, found only in Japanese, might be one of the predisposing factors to trigger the pathomechanism of acute encephalopathy in the Japanese population, and that it is causally related to the severity of disease. The decreased blood ATP level seems to reflect systemic mitochondrial dysfunction including the blood brain barrier during the acute phase of encephalopathy.
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PMID:Thermolabile CPT II variants and low blood ATP levels are closely related to severity of acute encephalopathy in Japanese children. 2127 29