There is new evidence about what might be behind the leading cause of death among infants in the United States -- Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
A study in
The Journal of the American Medical Association says there is a strong likelihood that SIDS is linked to a region of the brain that controls breathing.
U.S. News and World Report explains:
It's the leading cause of infant death in the United States. Now, doctors say, they have unearthed the strongest evidence yet that a region in the brain that controls breathing is abnormal in infants who die of SIDS.
For a study published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, a group of researchers in Massachusetts and California looked at the brains of 31 infants in San Diego who died of SIDS and 10 who died of other causes. They focused on the medulla, an area in the brain stem that controls involuntary actions like breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate that has been the focus of much SIDS research. They found that the SIDS babies were far more likely to have abnormal neurons and abnormal serotonin receptors in the medulla than non-SIDS babies. The abnormalities were more extensive than those found in earlier studies. What's more, the SIDS baby boys in the study had fewer neurotransmitter receptors than the SIDS girls, which may help explain why boys are twice as likely to die of SIDS than girls.
No one knows what causes the abnormalities in SIDS-prone babies.
Hannah Kinney, an associate professor of neuropathology at
Children's Hospital Boston and co-author of the JAMA study, thinks the abnormalities develop in utero. Other researchers disagree, and are looking for birth stresses or environmental factors in early life that could account for the problem. [...]
Kinney, who has been trying to solve the SIDS mystery since the early 1980s, says that her group's findings reinforce the
American Academy of Pediatrics' 14-year-old "Back to Sleep" program. It aims to reduce the risk of SIDS by telling parents and caregivers to put infants to sleep face up, and to keep soft bedding like quilts and pillows out of the baby's crib. A child without the brain abnormalities would have no problem sleeping face down, but a SIDS-prone child might.
I stipulate that you can find many statistics about SIDS, none of which seem to agree on how many children die of SIDS. Partly that is because there are so many interpretations of what constitutes a SIDS death.
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention says:
Each year in the United States, more than 4,500 infants die suddenly of no obvious cause. Half of these sudden, unexplained infant deaths (SUID) are due to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), the leading cause of SUID and of all deaths among infants aged 1-12 months. Largely because of the national Back to Sleep campaign's effort to reduce prone sleeping rates, SIDS rates have declined by more than 50 percent since 1990. However, studies have shown that since 1999, some deaths previously classified as SIDS are now classified as due to accidental suffocation or unknown/unspecified cause. This finding suggests that changes in reporting of cause of death may account for part of the recent decrease in SIDS rates.
By definition, SIDS can only be diagnosed after a thorough examination of the death scene, a review of the clinical history, and performance of an autopsy fail to find an explanation for the death. And yet we know that some SUID are not investigated and, when they are, cause-of-death data are not collected and reported consistently. This is concerning because inaccurate classification of cause and manner of death ultimately impedes prevention efforts because researchers cannot adequately monitor national trends or evaluate prevention programs.
Are people in your area using the new form that is supposed to be used when investigating a child's death?
The CDC says:
[O]n March 1, 2006, CDC released the Sudden, Unexplained Infant Death Investigation (SUIDI) Reporting Form for state and local use in infant death scene investigations. The SUIDI Reporting Form replaces the Investigation Report Form that accompanied the 1996 Guidelines for the Death Scene Investigation of Sudden, Unexplained Infant Death.
SIDS cases have declined nationwide in recent years. The
National Conference of State Legislatures says:
One important factor credited by experts is the campaign to encourage parents to place infants on their backs to sleep.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has been instrumental in the campaign. The
Maternal and Child Health Bureau also launched a new effort to educate childcare workers about the importance of placing babies on their backs to sleep.
.
Almost all 50 states have some SIDS legislation on the books. Most of the laws deal with reporting deaths and training emergency and child-care workers.
Here is a list of state laws for you.
While SIDS cases nationwide have dropped,
the death rate in child-care settings has been fairly steady.
The CDC says SIDS is twice as common among American Indian and Alaska Natives than whites.
It also
lists some risk factors for SIDS:
1. Tummy (prone) or side-sleeping
Infants who are put to sleep on their tummy or side are more likely to die from SIDS than infants who sleep on their backs.
2. Soft sleep surfaces
Sleeping on a waterbed, couch, sofa or pillows, or sleeping with stuffed toys has been associated with an increased risk for SIDS.
3. Loose Bedding
Sleeping with pillows or loose bedding such as comforters, quilts and blankets increases [an] infant's risk for SIDS.
4. Overheating
Infants who overheat because they are overdressed, have too many blankets on, or are in a room that is too hot are at a higher risk of SIDS.
5. Smoking
Infants born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are at increased risk of SIDS. Also infants exposed to smoke at home or at daycare are more likely to die from SIDS.
6. Bed-sharing
Sharing a bed with anyone other than the parents or caregivers and with people who smoke or are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, increases an infant's risk for SIDS. The safest place for an infant to sleep is in their own crib or other separate safe sleep surface next to the parent or caregiver's bed.
7. Preterm and low-birth-weight infants
Infants born premature or low birth weight are more likely to die from SIDS.
A Change Underway in Video Sharing
In the last week, a change has begun that may shape social networking and file sharing sites in significant ways. Will it spell the downfall of YouTube and MySpace? It seems to me that the sharing of copyrighted material is one of the reasons people use these sites.
- MySpace is about to begin using a program to search for copyright-protected music on peoples' sites. Get more details from GraceNote. Once the new technology is integrated into its service, MySpace users who repeatedly try to upload unauthorized music will have their sites nuked.
- C/Net points out: "Metacafe, one of the top 10 video-sharing sites, also announced Monday that it will pay $5 to video creators for every 1,000 times each of their videos are watched. ... [V]ideo-sharing site Revver.com has shown that rewarding video makers
helps attract the best talent. The Los Angeles-based company, which
pays 50 percent of ad revenue to videographers, has drawn some of the
Web's top auteurs, including the producers of Lonelygirl15, a
much-watched fictional series about a home-schooled teenage girl."
The Washington Post says:
Six of the top 20 most-watched videos on YouTube.com as of yesterday came from movies, TV shows, commercials or music videos. Viewed more than 5 million times each, they include clips from NBC's "America's Got Talent," the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" and Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" music video.
Posting copyrighted clips violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But under that law, YouTube and similar sites cannot be held liable if they have a mechanism for taking down copyrighted materials "expeditiously." YouTube said it plans to launch technology that will help it automatically identify copyrighted content.
Rival site Guba, which has about 2 million monthly users, has its own filtering technology that blocks copyrighted goods from being posted more than once.
The No-Trans-Fat Movement
New York City's health department has proposed to ban trans fats from the city's restaurants. The Associated Press says:
An average American eats 4.7 pounds of trans fats a year, and the oil is used as a shortening in baked goods like cookies, crackers and doughnuts, as well as in deep frying. Experts say a ban in New York would reverberate across the country because the city's food industry is so large. [...]
Louis Nunez, president of New York's Latino Restaurant Association, said a quick survey by his group shows at least 980 of its members don't know what trans fats are.
I wonder what reaction you would hear from other health departments.
I have been seeing stories, like this one, that report school systems are removing trans fats from lunches.
Denmark declared war on trans fats a couple of years ago, and threatened offenders with hefty fines. ABC News reports:
The Danish health ministry reports that cardiovascular disease has fallen by 20 percent in the last five years. However, other countries have reported similar drops in heart disease where smoking has been restricted and where industry has made efforts to improve some foods. In countries that are making no effort to regulate the amount of trans fat in food, such as Hungary and Bulgaria, heart disease rates have continued to climb.
Denmark is the only country to have so sharply limited trans fats, passing a law in 2003 that came into effect in 2004, making it illegal for any food to contain more than 2 percent of trans fat.
Sometimes customers fight back when manufacturers change to healthier recipes. One potato-chip manufacturer was flooded with complaints and switched back to the trans-fat recipe.
I was just thinking about whether any politician would be dumb or courageous enough to try to regulate how people cook in New Orleans; Charlotte, N.C.; Memphis; Birmingham or Kansas City. Any politician who tried to change or take away Tuscaloosa, Ala., or Syracuse, N.Y. barbecue rib joints would be killed and never found. Any jury would find the killings to be justified.
Hubble Help
Sometime soon, but no earlier than May 2008, NASA will launch a rescue mission to save the Hubble Space Telescope. For 16 years, Hubble has been sending photographs of deep space back to earth, the likes of which mankind had never seen before. See this collection.
Until now, NASA had officially planned to allow the telescope to die. Yesterday, that changed. The fix won't be easy or without risk. Astronauts will have to make four or five space walks to install fresh batteries, new hardware and even a new camera.
In no small way, it was a public outcry that convinced NASA to save Hubble. "Save Hubble" Web sites and petition drives popped up. Here is another one.
Why not try contacting your local astronomy association. Here is a map of cities with Night Sky clubs to get you started. Astronomy Magazine has even more cities listed.
Do your schools have after-school astronomy clubs?
Who was Edwin Powell Hubble?
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When the information comes directly from another source, it will be
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original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
If memory serves, SIDS deaths have occasionally led overzealous DAs...
