Blood lead level and seizure: a narrative review

Abstract

Environmental pollution is one of the most serious and fast-growing problems in the world of today. Lead poisoning is a threatening environmental situation with the potential of causing irreversible health issues and serious negative consequences in adults and children. Lead proves to have almost no clear biological function. However, once it enters the body, it is known to cause severe health effects, which might be irreversible. In this article, we aimed to review the related literature to find evidence concerning the effect of lead toxicity on CNS, particularly its role in febrile convulsion. In this review, PubMed database was searched using MeSH terms. One hundred and fifty seven articles were retrieved, most of which were irrelevant to the topic. After a thorough search in PubMed and Google Scholar, seizure was shown to be one of the consequences of lead toxicity, but there was no evidence of epilepsy or febrile convulsion, induced by this metal contamination.