Such a deficit in response capability, they say, possibly is 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. 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.
Maturation of these cells may be at lower levels in these babies. Such a reaction, however, was not seen in rats less than 12 days old, suggesting that the brain pathway in neonatal rats may not be sufficiently developed to respond. The research was a part of the doctoral dissertation of Eric M. Horn, now a neurosurgery resident at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. Waldrop is the UI vice chancellor for research and a professor in the UI College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign. Their research was funded by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the American Heart Association.