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Molecular and Integrative Physiology
New Hope for SIDS Babies
Scientists in LAS have identified a specific brain pathway in which neurons activate in times of low oxygen (hypoxia) and trigger increased breathing. Studies of electrical currents in rat brains have led the scientists to postulate that many newborns don't have enough neurons to respond sufficiently to hypoxia. Such a deficit in response capability, they say, is possibly a factor in sudden infant death syndrome, which each year claims the lives of 3,000 babies under a year old in the United States.
"It is not fully understood why newborns, whether they are humans, rats, cats, dogs, or whatever, do not have a maintained response to low oxygen," says Tony G. Waldrop, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology. "My lab has shown that neurons in some of the brain areas involved in the control of breathing are inherently sensitive to low oxygen."
This sensitivity increases over developmental time. Newborn animals have far fewer neurons that respond to hypoxia than do adults.
By Holly Korab
Winter 2001