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Chance Discovery Points to Crib Death Cause

Posted on: Friday, 4 July 2008, 00:05 CDT

Researchers said Thursday they found an imbalance of brain chemicals that could be to blame for sudden infant death in the developed world.

In the journal Science, researchers wrote that they created mice whose sudden deaths resembled crib death in humans, and they found the missing link may be an out of balance self-regulating system which controls the chemical serotonin.

"At first sight the mice were normal," said Cornelius Gross of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Italy, who led the study.

"But then they suffered sporadic and unpredictable drops in heart rate and body temperature. More than half of the mice eventually died of these crises during a restricted period of early life. It was at that point that we thought it might have something to do with SIDS."

They said they wanted their experiment to help doctors recognize human babies at high risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), also known as cot death.

The root cause of SIDS remains a mystery, yet it is the leading cause of death in babies under a year old. Often, seemingly healthy-looking infants can die in less than an hour.

There has been a major public awareness push to put babies to sleep on their backs, which has dramatically reduced crib death rates in several countries. SIDS is also linked to smoking around infants and during pregnancy.

Globally, SIDS kills one in every 2,000 babies. Parents are cautioned about overheated rooms and minimizing bedding materials that could cause suffocation.

"Ultimately, we hope it will give new ideas to doctors about how to diagnose babies at risk for SIDS," said Enrica Audero, a researcher who worked on the study.

British scientists said they had pinpointed two common bacteria that may contribute to crib deaths.

Gross said his team was studying the correlation between brain chemicals and anxiety and aggression, when they realized their results might have something to do with crib death.

He said it was better for mice to have a malfunctioning serotonin system than no system at all. The study showed genetically engineered mice whose self-regulating serotonin system was turned off did not die.

"We have actually shown you can introduce changes in the serotonin system and they can cause death," Gross said.

Serotonin neurons in the brainstem -- the part of the brain that controls breathing and other unconscious functions -- do not work properly in the genetically engineered mice.

The study found lab mice died suddenly if they were unable to activate key brain functions, like the regulation of body temperature and heart rate.

Researchers hope their findings will one day help doctors identify babies at greater risk.

Source: redOrbit staff and wire reports

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