A blood-test may help identify infants who are risk.
You know…for all of our stupidity as a species, once in a while we get it right.
This is amazing. Even more so because the lead researcher is a mother whose child died of SIDS. A reminder that some people who experience tragedy will do their best to prevent other people from suffering the same. That’s the kind of thing that gives me hope in mankind.
Cheers to that.
Amazing! I wonder what preventative steps could work in the future for babies who are at risk. And at some point, do babies with this lower enzyme activity outgrow the danger of dying in their sleep?
I suppose they’ll need follow-up studies to answer that question. Which I’m sure are coming.
Baby c-pap?
This is really cool. I think the finding of reassurance for these parents is a huge gain to healthy lives even before we find a way to use this to save at-risk babies.
That is a fantastic breakthrough.
The traditional preventive steps (no bedclothes, sleeping face up, etc… do work and lessened the risk by a very significant amount -over 50% reduction- when applied and communicated through public policy, and most public policy campaigns have focused on a single action -mostly sleeping face up-. The combination of all known advise can probably generate an even greater risk reduction).
This new study can help identifying those babies most at risk so extra care can be taken with them. This alone can bring down the incidence significantly and save many babies.
As to outgrow the condition I’d say the evidence points towards it. It’s prevalence lowers as age rises and it’s very uncommon after a six months and extremely rare after a year.