As an admitting clerk at the UCLA Emergency Room (my college job), one of the saddest cases I witnessed was the death of a young child with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The young parents had left their baby with the grandparents for the first time to take a weekend off together. Just watching the dynamics of the family, with the blame and anger, you knew that this pain would last a long time.
Rates of SIDS dropped 44% in response to new recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics to put infants to sleep on their backs instead of their stomachs. When my children were little (1979-1982), doctors were still recommending putting babies to sleep on their tummies, but it just didn’t seem natural to me, and I didn’t do it.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has information on its “Back to Sleep” campaign here.
In spite of the improvements resulting from this change in recommendation, cases continued to occur. Boys were more likely to die than girls, and Native American and African-American infants were more at risk than white infants. The causes of these cases remained mysterious until this month, when a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) implicated abnormal serotonergic neurons in the medulla in SIDS. Hopefully, this new knowledge will lead to preventive strategies. In the meantime, good practice involves putting babies to bed without blankets, toys, pillows, and other items that could potentially cause suffocation until the infant becomes very skilled at rolling.
MSNBC has a related video here.
7 Comments
MollyMcLaughlin · November 16, 2006 at 12:49 pm
What is physiologically happening in SIDS? Is the death due to lack of oxygen in the brain or is some other process happening? Also, since the study implicated abnormal serotonergic neurons in the medulla, is there a way to test the baby’s neurons (besides the fact it would probably be dangerous/cruel)?
emhughes · November 16, 2006 at 9:12 pm
It is good that they have discovered abnormal serotonergic neurons in the medulla in SIDS babies, that should cut down on other causes of death being labled SIDS. What is the physiological change that occurs in the brain that causes an infant to outgrow their risk of dying from SIDS?
Krstna1418 · November 24, 2006 at 1:56 pm
I find it interesting that few websites on SIDS offer the same research findings for parents … leaving them to think that SIDS is “unpredictable” and “can strike without warning.” They don’t even mention gender or ethnic differences. Though the research is new and many may be wary of posting this new information, I think telling parents that there is an actual suspected cause is better than allowing them to think their seemingly healthy baby is at risk each and every night.
nelsayed · November 26, 2006 at 4:19 pm
This is such an amazing finding. I had no idea so many infants died each year from SIDS. I hope that these findings will cut back on the number of infants lost to SIDS each year. Do all babies that have low serotonergic neurons experience SIDS or are they just more vulnerable to it? If so do these babies continue to have a low amount of serotonergic neurons throughout their lives?
Ariel_Januszewicz · November 27, 2006 at 12:14 am
I think this finally makes sense to me. I never really understood the connection between how you position a baby and whether or not a baby dies of SIDS. A baby with SIDS has abnormal serotonergic neurons which don’t process the fact that the baby is rebreathing its own air increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in its body. The baby dies from asphyxiation, unable to be aroused by those crucial neurons. It will be interesting to see if further studies support this finding.
triciagordon3213 · November 28, 2006 at 11:40 pm
I always had questions about SIDS, because I had heard recently of someone whose child died from this. They had put there baby to sleep in her back, which was supposed to help with SIDS. Even though it just decreases the chances of SIDS I was suprised to hear about it. This makes a lot of sense that there is something else correlated with SIDS.
Milissa · December 6, 2006 at 4:41 pm
SIDS is a scary topic. I too have young children and the fear was always there when they were infants. I was the type of mom who seemed to sleep with one eye open. It is always great to hear of new findings regarding this topic because I can’t imagine being the parent in this situation. Hopefully this recent finding of the abnormal seratonergic neurons will just bring us that much closer to getting rid of this problem all together.
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