Study finds brain abnormality that may be linked to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

(CNN) – Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, is the leading cause of death for babies in their first year of life and the cause remains a mystery.

Most of the time this happens when the baby is sleeping.

Scientists have looked into a theory for the cause of SIDS, which is a disturbance in breathing.

A team studied 58 babies who died of SIDS and compared them to a control group of a dozen babies whose causes of death were unknown.

They found an abnormality in the brain receptor of SIDS babies.

The receptor is involved in the body’s protective response to low oxygen, which causes us to wake up and gasp.

An abnormality could be interfering with this initiating breathing process.

The finding suggested that a larger cluster of SIDS cases may be linked to this brain receptor abnormality.

THE study was published in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.

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