An interdisciplinary team of the University of Strasbourg, under the direction of Professor Pascal Bousquet, has recently announced a work that brings new discoveries about sudden death.
Sudden death, despite having reduced its incidence since it is advised that babies sleep on their backs, continues to be a cause of death of between 1 and 3 infants per 2000. To deepen their causes this work has been done for a team that has brought together pediatricians and molecular biologists.
They performed analyzes of the hearts of babies killed by this cause, finding certain enzymes related to the action of the vagus nerve, which is the one that is responsible for slowing the heart rhythm when it triggers.
They compared the results of these analyzes with those performed on the hearts of children who died from other causes, such as trauma, and it can be highlighted that there are reliable data to indicate that abnormal activity of the vagus nerve can cause cardiac abnormalities.
With this sudden death discovery they open the possibility of preventing it by blood tests that, carried out in the first days of life, can warn of these abnormalities in the functioning of the vagus nerve and also take into account this added risk if medications are taken that may alter its function.
Via | Strasbourg University
