Benign familial neonatal seizures

Benign familial neonatal seizures (BFNS), also referred to as benign familial neonatal epilepsy (BFNE), is a rare autosomal dominant inherited form of seizures. This condition manifests in newborns as brief and frequent episodes of tonic-clonic seizures with asymptomatic periods in between. Characteristically, seizure activity spontaneously ends during infancy and does not affect childhood development. However, some studies have reported that a minority of children with BFNS consequently develop intellectual disability. Additionally, BFNS increases lifetime susceptibility to seizures as approximately 14% of those afflicted go on to develop epilepsy later in life. There are three known genetic causes of BFNE, two being the voltage-gated potassium channels KCNQ2 (BFNC1) and KCNQ3 (BFNC2) and the third being a chromosomal inversion (BFNC3). There is no obvious correlation between most of the known mutations and clinical variability seen in BFNE.