SIDS and serotonin
Brain chemical implicated in sporadic changes and death in mice similar to SIDS-symptoms
Changing how the brain uses the chemical serotonin can cause unexpected, sporadic death—at least in mice, an Italian team reports in the July 3 Science.
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The research lends credence to the idea that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which each year kills roughly 2,000 human infants aged 0 to 1 year, is related to a deficiency in the babies’ serotonin system.
“While it is premature to make a direct link between our study and the cause of SIDS,” says Cornelius Gross, a neuroscientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Monterotondo, Italy, who led the study, “our work should strengthen the belief that serotonin is critical to SIDS and should focus clinicians’ research on understanding the link between the two.”