SIDS: Montreal specialist encouraged by study finding marker to help detect risk
Each time Dr. Aurore Côté calls a parent who has just lost a child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, she braces herself. She's witnessed the grief many times before.
"Being called and having to relive it – it's like it's an open wound, and you put a knife, and you turn it in the wound," said Côté, a respiratory medicine specialist at the Montreal Children's Hospital.
But she reaches out to the family with only one thought in mind - that perhaps she can help them in a way the investigating coroner cannot.
There are about 30 SIDS deaths per year in Quebec, occurring during a child's first year of life. About two-thirds are not only unexpected but are also unexplained.
The tragic circumstances -- a baby sleeping peacefully one moment and lifeless the next -- sets off a chain reaction of events and responses.
"To have a child robbed from them so suddenly, they feel all the guilt in the world," said Côté, who is also the director of the province's Jeremy Rill Centre, for sudden death in infancy and childhood.
When the detailed medical investigation that follows doesn't find anything to explain the cause of the baby's death, the family is left with the permanent pain of not knowing.
A recent study published in The Lancet, however, has yielded some important and "interesting" clues about one possible cause of SIDS, said Côté.
She hopes the results will be replicated in more extensive studies, perhaps leading eventually to early detection and preventive treatment.
ENZYME LOWER IN BABIES WHO DIED OF SIDS
The researchers, led by Dr. Carmel Harrington at The Children's Hospital Westmead in Sydney, Australia, identified a marker that could help detect which babies are at higher risk of SIDS.
The marker is an enzyme called butyrylcholinesterase (BChE). The study found it was lower in babies who died of the syndrome than in groups of "surviving controls and other non-SIDS deaths," the authors wrote.
The enzyme has a role in the part of the autonomic system that regulates certain brain functions, including sleep and arousal.
It's long been hypothesized that some babies who die of SIDS weren't able to wake themselves up.
The study indicates that dysfunction involving BChE makes babies vulnerable.
The researchers were able to measure BChE levels in blood samples taken from newborns two to three days after birth that had been preserved on filter paper.
"The babies that didn't die, they had 8.5 units/mg in the two groups," Côté explained, "and the same thing for babies who died but [for whom] they found a cause."
But for the babies who died of SIDS, the BChE level "was at 5.6 units/mg," Côté said, a statistically significant finding.
"That was interesting…and a strength of the study," Côté said, given that the blood samples were taken when the babies who later died were alive.
The study's weakness, Côté said, is that there were only 26 cases of babies who died of SIDS included, making it a small sample.
So more data is needed. But she is encouraged by the results since there was already a lot of indirect evidence or biological plausibility that the autonomic nervous system was involved.
This study provides early evidence that the problem might be there from birth.
HOW TO REDUCE THE RISK OF SUDDEN INFANT DEATH
In the early 1990s, Quebec launched an awareness campaign called 'Back to Sleep,' which by 1995 had reduced the number of unexpected deaths in the province by about half.
The numbers have remained relatively stable ever since.
The advice on how to decrease the risk of SIDS still stands today:
- always place a baby to sleep on their back and not on their stomach (unless advised by a doctor to do otherwise)
- do not smoke before and after the baby is born
- breastfeed the baby
- have the baby sleep in their cradle, bassinet or crib in the same room as the parents. For reasons that are not well understood, this decreases the risk for the first six months
- ensure the baby has a safe sleep space that is firm and flat, with a tightly fitted sheet, no loose, soft bedding, bumper pads, pillows or toys, and no gaps between the mattress and the sides
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Cuban government apologizes to Montreal-area family after delivering wrong body
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
What is changing about Canada's capital gains tax and how does it impact me?
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
'Anything to win': Trudeau says as Poilievre defends meeting protesters
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of welcoming 'the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists,' after the Conservative leader was photographed meeting with protesters, which his office has defended.
Fair in Ontario, flurries in Labrador: Weather systems make for an erratic spring
"It's a bit of a complicated pattern; we've got a lot going on," said Jennifer Smith of the Meteorological Service of Canada in an interview with CTVNews.ca on Wednesday. "[As is] typical with weather, all of these things are related."
Boeing's financial woes continue, while families of crash victims urge U.S. to prosecute the company
Boeing said Wednesday that it lost US$355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work from a growing number of whistleblowers.
Police tangle with students in Texas and California as wave of campus protest against Gaza war grows
Police tangled with student demonstrators in Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
Bank of Canada officials split on when to start cutting interest rates
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Northern Ont. lawyer who abandoned clients in child protection cases disbarred
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.