Study: Babies’ Low Serotonin levels Cause SIDS

Posted by: Ariael's Dog Walking Service on: February 3, 2010

• In: Uncategorized
• Leave a Comment

Researchers may have solved the mystery of what makes some babies vulnerable to sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, which kills more than 2,300 babies a year.Infants who died of SIDS had low levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that helps the brainstem regulate breathing, temperature, sleeping, waking and other automatic functions, according to an autopsy study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Serotonin normally helps babies respond to high carbon-dioxide levels during sleep by helping them wake up and shift their head position to get fresh air, says senior author Hannah Kinney of Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston.

When babies are placed face down, their exhaled carbon dioxide may pool in loose bedding, where it can be breathed back in, Kinney says.

Normally, babies sense high carbon-dioxide levels automatically and wake up, she says. Babies who don’t respond appropriately, however, may never wake up.

“This could have a huge impact,” says Rachel Moon, a leading SIDS researcher at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

Researchers performed autopsies on 35 infants who died of SIDS, comparing chemicals in their brainstems with those found in seven babies who died unexpectedly of known causes and five infants who died from other chronic problems related to a lack of oxygen, the study says.

Serotonin levels were 26% lower in the tissue of babies who died from SIDS, the study says.

Doctors eventually hope to use their discovery to screen babies for serotonin problems and find a way to protect them, says co-author David Paterson, also of Harvard and Children’s Hospital. Those developments are still years away, he says.

The study confirms the importance of safe infant-sleeping practices, says Moon, who adds that babies who have normal serotonin levels could still die as a result of risky practices, such as loose bedding.

The Back to Sleep campaign, begun in 1994, helped to cut SIDS deaths in half, although deaths have not declined further in the past decade, Kinney says.