#cw infant death

foreverrwinter:

They’ve found the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Babies who die of SIDS have a significantly lower level of an enzyme, the purpose of which is to rouse the baby from sleep if necessary (such as the baby stops breathing). This is extremely huge science and medicine news. There is a biological reason. It’s not random.

Holy shit.  This is brand-new news, guys–the linked article was published May 11, and the scholarly paper came out earlier this week.  (Appears to be open access at this time.)

The next thing, according to the article, is to develop a screening test to identify at-risk infants at birth–that’s expected to take several years, unfortunately, but it’ll make a huge difference, both to parents who will know to take every precaution (and, hopefully, some new ones that can be discovered now that this is known), and to ones who will learn that they can relax a bit about their child’s sleep position.  It’ll also be of some help to parents who lose a baby to this, because they won’t have to deal with the extra burden of being suspected of having caused it.