SIDS Cause Discovered?
While child care experts have suspected for some time that the prone sleeping position of infants can be related to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), the reason for this major cause of postneonatal death in the developed world has long been a mystery. Based on previous work that implicated Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that colonizes the gastric lining (C.P. Pattison, B.J. Marshall, "Proposed link between Helicobacter pylori and sudden infant death syndrome," Medical Hypotheses, 49:365-9, 1997), researchers at the University of Manchester, U.K., sought to establish the incidence of H. pylori in SIDS cases (J.A. Kerr et al., "An association between sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and Helicobacter pylori infection," Archives of Disease in Childhood 2000, 83:429-34, November 2000). By examining stomach, trachea, and lung tissues of 32 cases of SIDS and eight controls, lead researcher Jonathan Kerr, consultant medical microbiologist, Infectious Diseases...
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