Health Watch SIDS Breakthrough

Reported by: Linda Watkins-Bennett
Email: lindawb@khsltv.com
Last Update: 2/11 6:25 pm

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   There's been a potential break-through in the effort to find what causes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
  SIDS is the leading cause of death among babies, and it comes without warning.
These days, parents are told to put their newborn babies to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk for SIDS. Since the early 90's, the "Back to Sleep" campaign has been successful in reducing the number of crib deaths by about half . But still, thousands of seemingly healthy babies die in their sleep each year.
  Dr. Hannah Kinney of Children's Hospital Boston says,"You cannot tell a living baby is going to die of sids that night. There's no marker."
But now, doctors at Children's Hospital have uncovered a big clue ... leading them to a likely cause for SIDS, "We've come to focus on Serotonin."
Dr. Kinney, along with a team of doctors and scientists, has found that sids babies have low levels of Serotonin in their brainstems. It helps regulate breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. Too little could impair those functions ... especially during sleep.
"Something about sleep unmasks the defect when the baby is stressed", says Dr. Kinney.
Stress,like re-breathing carbon dioxide when they're sleeping on their tummies, makes affected babies vulnerable. Researchers say infants with normal brainstem Serotonin levels would be able to wake up long enough to turn their heads and breathe fresh air.
The long-term goal is to develop a test to identify which babies have this Serotonin defect, and then try to prevent it altogether.
Georgia Nelson, the SIDS Coordinator for The Butte County Health, told Action News they're following the new developments. But for now, efforts will continue to educate parents about safe sleep environments.
Fitted sheets... firm mattresses... no fluffy blankets or crib bumpers... and putting babies to sleep on their backs instead of their Stomachs.
You can learn more at www.californiasids.com and http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/safe_sleep_gen.cfm.###

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