Specifically, breaths following long breaths showed less change in infants who later died. Such a difference points to the brain areas which fail when vulnerable infants encounter a potentially lethal respiratory challenge during sleep. Harper's research team included Drs. V.L. Schechtman and M.Y. Lee of UCLA, Dr. A. J. Wilson of the University of Sheffield, and Dr. D. Southall, formerly of the Brompton Hospital and now at Staffordshire Hospital, who provided the data for the study. SIDS is defined as the sudden, unexplained death of an infant under one year of age.
Death is associated with a sleep period.
Approximately 5,000-6,000 U.S. infants die of SIDS each year, making it the leading cause of death among infants one month to one year of age. Usually, infants are apparently healthy before succumbing to SIDS, and show no signs of danger. These studies found an apparent restriction in the extent of change from one heartbeat to the next in these infants. Another factor implicating respiratory-control problems was that SIDS infants have fewer breathing pauses, or apnea, than other infants. Although breathing pauses normally occur in infants, earlier studies done by these researchers found that infants who later died of SIDS exhibited fewer short pauses in breathing, even though their respiratory rates and variability were normal.