mollwollfumble said:
/doctors-unveil-potential-cause-sids/
Published in the journal Neurology by a team led by Dr. Laura Gould, the study uses a registry of cases collected by the SUDC Registry and Research Collaborative.
By analyzing over 300 cases, as well as video footage, scientists discovered that brief seizures may be to blame. They found footage showing muscle convulsions lasting less than 60 seconds occurring within 30 minutes of known sudden unexplained deaths in childhood.
Convulsive seizures may be the smoking gun that medical science has been looking for to understand why these children die.
The study backs previous findings that infants experiencing seizures accompanied by a fever were 10 times more likely to suffer a sudden, unexpected death.
Additionally, a 2022 study published in eBioMedicine found a link between SIDS and low levels of a blood enzyme called butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), which is important for proper wake-up function.
“These families can now live with the knowledge that this was not their fault,”
https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000208038
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352396422002225
> More than 2,900 US children aged younger than 4 years die from unknown causes each year. The incidence of unexpected infant and toddler deaths in the United States is unchanged for 2 decades. They are mostly sleep-related and unwitnessed with unremarkable autopsies, limiting our understanding of death mechanisms.
> Research on sudden unexplained deaths in childhood (SUDCs), aged 1–18 years, is limited with less than 1% of research publications compared with sudden infant deaths. Most involve 1- to 4-year olds; the fifth leading category of death in this age group.
> In our registry of 301 sudden unexplained child deaths, a series of 7 consecutively enrolled cases with home video recordings of the child’s last sleep period were independently assessed.
> Five video recordings were continuous and 2 were triggered by sound or motion. Two lacked audio. All continuous recordings included a terminal convulsive event lasting 8–50 seconds; 4 children survived for >2.5 minutes postconvulsion. Among discontinuous videos, time lapses limited review; 1 suggested a convulsive event. Six were prone with face down, and 1 had autopsy evidence of airway obstruction. Primary cardiac arrhythmias were not supported; all 7 children had normal cardiac pathology and whole-exome sequencing identified no known cardiac disease variants.
> Compared with older children, those who died younger than 60 months (n = 248) were more likely to have a history of febrile seizures (p ≤·001), first-degree family history of febrile seizures (p < 0.001), upper respiratory infection or fever in past 48 hours of life (p < 0.001), unwitnessed (p < 0.001), sleep-related (p < 0.001), body prone (p < 0.001), face down (p < 0.003), and less likely to bedshare (p < 0.011).
Of 8 children dying unexpectedly in videos, one was at a child daycare centre and the video was not of sufficient quality. Of the remainder, one was judged to be asphyxia due to airway obstruction by enlarged pharyngeal tonsils due to viral and bacterial infections.
Abnormal movements were identified in 6 videos. In all 5 continuously recorded videos, a convulsive event was identified shortly before death. All convulsive events were 8–50 seconds. Abnormal sounds were identified in 4 of 5 audio-recorded events; all were respiratory sounds or vocalizations. Agonal, labored, or deep breathing was identified in 5 cases by audio or visual analysis. Of the 5 continuous videos, all had convulsions and 4 were alive postconvulsion for at least 2.5 minutes.
> Febrile seizures are approximately 10-fold more frequent in sudden unexplained toddler death cohorts than controls. Among our 248 Registry cases who died before 60 months, 29.4% had febrile seizures, consistent with previous studies implicating febrile seizures in some of these deaths. Seizures may also contribute to toddler deaths explained by other factors. Febrile seizures occurred in 22% of toddlers whose deaths were certified explained because of infections and accidents, more than 5-fold higher than in the age-matched controls. This supports that febrile seizures were the mechanism of deaths attributed to other causes by current death certification practices.
> A febrile convulsion is a fit or seizure that occurs in children when they have a high fever. This can happen in children aged 6 months to 6 years.
Well, there goes my “killed by anaphylaxis caused by cats” hypothesis.