Scientists Link SIDS to Brain Abnormalities
After scientists spent decades battling over the physical causes of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, a study has recently discovered irregular development in the brain region that regulates breathing as a probable cause.
The study, reported in last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, was a collaborative effort by Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Boston, Harvard Medical School and the UCSD School of Medicine and other UCSD institutions, which autopsied the brains of 31 infants who died of SIDS and 10 who had different causes of death.
Researchers focused on the brain region that controls involuntary actions like breathing, blood pressure and heart rate, discovering that babies afflicted with SIDS were more likely than others to have abnormalities responding to serotonin, a chemical that plays an important role in controlling breathing and sleep.
This result, which is more extensive than previous findings, provides evidence against widely held beliefs that SIDS is caused by child abuse or carbon dioxide suffocation from soft pillows.
However, no one has yet pinpointed an early warning signal for the unexpected deaths, according to University of Virginia professor of pediatrics John Kattwinkel, which happen to seemingly healthy babies generally between two and four months.
Nevertheless, researchers remain hopeful about the potential of science to find a physical cause.
“SIDS is not a mystery,” associate professor of neuropathology at Harvard Medical School Hannah Kinney said. “It’s not something that parents did. SIDS is a disease. It’s a scientific problem, and it can be tackled with scientific methods.”
UC Analyzes Small-Scale Global Warming
Researchers from UC Santa Cruz have recently published a series of letters analyzing the recent warming trend in the Pacific Ocean, which has placed certain types of California marine life in an unstable and hostile habitat.
For the last two years, ocean waters have been warm and nutrient-poor, according to the research published in the Geophysical Research Letters. The warming has impacted the food chain by diminishing the supply of food available to fish, birds and other marine life.
“Once is a fluke, but two years in a row makes you think something might be happening,” UC Santa Cruz ocean sciences professor Raphael Kudela said.
According to the letters, a possible contributing factor is global warming, which can affect the local climate on a smaller scale. While it isn’t certain, researchers believe that these conditions are a preview of what could be forthcoming in the next several years if the warming trend continues.
The studies suggest a need for long-term monitoring of the coastal environment, Kudela said.
