Doctors Might Have Found a Way to Predict a Baby's Risk of Dying From SIDS

A recent study uncovered a common symptom that could help scientists develop a screening test.

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SIDS — which is short for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome — is arguably one of the most terrifying things that could happen to a baby and its parents.

But doctors at The Children's Hospital in Westmead, Australia might have found a potential solution to help identify and prevent SIDS following a recent study, the Australian Associated Press reports. In the study, the doctors discovered that babies who died of SIDS actually had a common symptom: lower levels of a particular protein called orexin. Orexin has a vital function in babies: It causes them to roll over when they don't have enough oxygen (which can happen if they're sleeping on their stomachs). It's also a symptom that can cause sleep apnea. In the study, the doctors looked at 46 babies, 27 of which had died of SIDS. They found the babies who died of SIDS had around 20 percent less orexin than the others.

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Dr. Rita Machaalani, who led the study, told The Daily Telegraph that she and her team would be working on a way to find out what's the ideal level of orexin, noting that, "if we can determine what's the normal level in babies when born then we can use those abnormalities to predict kids that might be at risk in the future of SIDS or sleep apnea."

Alexandra Martiniuk of The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Sydney pointed out that there could be other causes of SIDS aside from the decreased orexin supply. But, she said, this research is still a "huge breakthrough, because in my knowledge of SIDS there hasn't been anything biological like that before, it has always been environmental risk," meaning that people blamed SIDS on external factors, not something physical within the baby.

Until Machaalani's team is able to develop some kind of screening test to identify a baby's risk of SIDS, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents sleep in the same room as their infant until their baby is at least six months old, but ideally until the baby is a year old.

(h/t PopSugar)

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