Australian scientists identify biomarkers that cause sudden infant death

In a major breakthrough, Australian researchers have identified a biomarker that can detect babies at increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) while they are alive.

SIDS is the unexplained death of an apparently healthy infant under one year of age, during a period of sleep.

The incidence of SIDS has more than halved in recent years due to public health campaigns that address the major known risk factors of stomach sleeping, maternal smoking, and overheating. However, the SIDS rate remains high and contributes to nearly 50 percent of all postneonatal deaths in Western countries.

A team at Children’s Hospital at Westmead (CHW) identified butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) as the biochemical marker that can help prevent death in babies.

In the study, published in The Lancets eBioMedicine, the team analyzed BChE activity in 722 dried blood spots (DBS) taken at birth as part of the Newborn Screening Program.

BChE was measured in both SIDS and infants dying of other causes, and each was compared with 10 surviving infants with the same date of birth and gender.

The findings showed that BChE levels were significantly lower in infants who subsequently died of SIDS compared with living controls and other infant deaths, said lead author Dr. Carmel Harrington, a research student at CHW, who lost her own son for SIDS 29 years ago.

BChE plays an important role in the brain’s arousal pathway, and researchers believe that its deficiency probably indicates an arousal deficit, which reduces the baby’s ability to wake up or respond to the external environment, causing vulnerability to SIDS.

“Babies have a very powerful mechanism for letting us know when they’re not happy. Usually, if a baby is faced with a life-threatening situation, like having trouble breathing while sleeping because they’re on their tummy, they’ll wake up and cry.” What this research shows is that some babies don’t have this same robust arousal response,” Dr. Harrington said.

“For a long time this was thought to be the case, but until now we didn’t know what was causing the lack of arousal. Now that we know BChE is involved, we can start to change the outcome for these babies and make SIDS a thing of the world.” last”.

After losing her son, Damien, to SIDS, Dr. Harrington has dedicated her career to finding answers for the condition. Harrington said these results not only offer hope for the future, but also answers for the past.

“This discovery has opened up the possibility of intervention and finally gives answers to parents who have lost their children so tragically. These families can now live with the knowledge that it was not their fault.”

The next steps for researchers are to begin looking at introducing the BChE biomarker into newborn screening and developing specific interventions to address enzyme deficiency.

–IANS

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(Only the headline and image in this report may have been modified by Business Standard staff; all other content is auto-generated from a syndicated source.)

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