Blood marker identified for babies at risk of SIDS hailed as ‘breakthrough’

On October 24, 2021, a newborn baby is holding a nurse’s finger in the maternity ward of a children’s hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan. REUTERS / Jorge Silva /

New York, May 13 (Reuters)-A team of Australian researchers have identified blood biochemical markers that may help identify newborns at risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). .. Prevention of intervention.

In their study, researchers said infants who died of SIDS had lower levels of an enzyme called butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) shortly after birth. BChE plays a major role in the wakefulness pathway of the brain, and low levels reduce the ability of sleeping babies to wake up and respond to their environment.

In a statement, Dr. Carmel Harrington, research leader at a children’s hospital in Westmead, Australia, said the findings are game-changing, providing hope for the future as well as answers to the past. He said he was doing it.

“It’s a nightmare for all parents that an apparently healthy baby doesn’t fall asleep, and until now there was no way to know which baby would die,” Harrington said. “But that’s not the case anymore. We found the first marker of vulnerability before we died.”

Harrington’s team used dry blood spots collected at birth as part of a newborn screening program to 26 infants who later died of SIDS, 41 infants who died from other causes, and 655 surviving infants. BChE levels were compared.

The fact that infants who later died of SIDS had significantly lower enzyme levels suggests that infants with SIDS were inherently vulnerable to autonomic nervous system dysfunction.

The Sydney Children’s Hospital Network in Australia called this discovery “the world’s first breakthrough.”

In Lancet’s eBio medicine, not waking up at the right time has long been considered an important component of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for SIDS, the researchers said.

SIDS is the death of an apparently healthy baby for unknown reasons while sleeping. According to a statement, Harrington lost his child to SIDS 29 years ago and has devoted his career to studying his medical condition.

Researchers said that regular measurements of BChE “need to be done urgently” to determine if they could help prevent future SIDS deaths.

Report by Nancy Rapid; Edited by Caroline Humer and Bill Burke

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