Bacteria Now Being Linked to SIDS

It is a parent's worst nightmare to know that their healthy infant suddenly is gone with no rhyme or reason. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the culprit in these deaths, has long been one of medicine's big mysteries. There may be some new answers to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and bacterias that could play a big part.

Some new results of an autopsy study indicate that approximately 10 percent of all cases involving sudden infant death syndrome(SIDS), the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria can be found in sites that are normally sterile.

A report on this matter was in the September 11th online issue of the Archives of Disease in Childhood and Dr. P. N. Goldwater, a physician from The Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, Austrailia, reviewed the autopsy records of 130 babies that died from SIDS. Out of those infants, 32 died of sudden unexpected death (SUDI) from an infection, and 33 died from a non-infectious case such as an accident.

She found that the babies that died from a non-infectious cause rarely had bacteria that was growing at sites that were normally sterile body sites. The others that dies from SIDS and SUDI, often had microbes that included potential pathoges that were present in these sterile sites.

Reguarding the Staphylococcus aureus bateria, it was said that 10.76 percent of the SIDS babies and 18.75 percent of the SUDI babies were found to harbor this microbe in a site that is normally sterile. However, the bacteria were not found in the cases of the accidental deaths.

The author of the study writes that there was no statically significant difference in the detection of sterile site coliform bateria was noted in the infants with SIDS when compared to the other groups. Coliform bacteria is normally found in the lower intestinal track and subsequently in the feces and are used as an index for sewage contamination. The microbes from the sterile sites showed no growth in 45.4 percent of the accidental deaths, 43 percent of the SIDS deaths, and 28.1 percent of the SUDI deaths.

The author of the study concludes that the results suggest that the microbes isolated in the SIDS infants may play a role in death.