Slashdot Mirror
New Possible SIDS Genes Identified
ScienceDaily is reporting that researchers at the Mayo Clinic have identified two more cardiac genes that could contribute to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). From the article: "In the two recent separate studies, researchers examined caveolin-3 (CAV3) and the cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR2) and found molecular and functional evidence in both to implicate them as SIDS-susceptibility genes. Researchers examined the tissue of 135 unrelated cases of SIDS -- in infants with an average age of 3 months old -- that had been referred to Mayo Clinic's Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory for molecular autopsy. In each study, two of the 135 cases possessed mutations in either CAV3 or RyR2."
Unless it has major advantages in youth/adult life. It increases the chance of death long before sexual maturity, evolution usually weeds those genes out rather quickly. Does the gene have any other known effect?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Something that occurs in less than 2% of studied cases is a "potential contributing cause"?
Have they tried researching culling songs yet?
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
In each study, two of the 135 cases possessed mutations in either CAV3 or RyR2.
So one case of each mutation was found in each trial, and 266 of the 270 cases remain unsolved. It sounds like it is barely above a statistical anomaly.
If you take a random sample of 270 people that like fishing, there will be some mutation that is common between two or more of them, but that's hardly enough to claim that this mutation makes you enjoy fishing.
It looks like there is still a lot more research to do before we understand what the effects of different genes / mutations are.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Just about every study revelas something that **could** lead to some breakthough. Every Mars voyage "could explain where the world or the solar system came from". Every new concoction "could cure cancer". All this over-hyped reporting is getting very boring. And for all those people who's lives are potentially improved, well 99% of them get to be disappointed by unfulfilled hype.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is just my theory, but maybe the genetic mutation is rather recent, and so by the time it started appearing, we had already started to intervene? And then because of that, those children had no problems passing on the gene. This would explain why it's such a small percentage of the population still; it's not like it would really HELP a person at all, but it wouldn't affect them after a certain age has passed at all.
Don't forget, that correlation doesn't always equal causation. How dumb would parents have to be to shake their child, for example? Well, the child gets those genes too..
(Just a thought)
Seems like a cool organisation. Wikipedia:
"Mayo Clinic is significant in the way the medical physicians' are paid. In most health care systems, medical doctors are paid based on the number of patients that they see. The more patients seen, the more a doctor gets paid. At Mayo Clinic, medical doctors are paid a salary that is unaffected by patient volume. This allows the doctors to spend time with their patients and not worry so much about time constraints. Physicians and surgeons have no undue influence upon them to do more procedures and operations."
That's a marvellous philosophy if you ask me, and they still made US$5.6 billion in 2004. Good for them.
But I really didn't think that your genes would be a contributing factor to shaken infant death syndrome...
SIDS!! -- The Movie!!
Can't wait.
.
"SIDS" is not a disease, it is a category of unexplained DEATH !! normally caused by so-called parents.
.
... is that the SIDS may be related to the application of the following device:
http://colitz.com/site/3216423/3216423.htm
(for the lazy: APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD BY CENTRIGUGAL FORCE).
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Recessive genes survive because you can carry the gene and suffer no side-effects. You will pass it on to half of your children (on average), who will like you, become carriers but show no symptoms. If each carrier has an average 2 children, you can expect that the number of carriers will stay roughly constant from one generation to the next.
For a child to show symptoms, both of their parents must be carriers of the recessive gene, and even then there is only a one-in-four chance of a child receiving two copies of the gene in question.
Fatal genetic diseases can survive in the gene pool indefinitely if the gene that causes it is recessive.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
but as a bachelor, I feel that we, as a society, should be confronting an altogether different problem-- SIBS, or Sudden Infant Birth Syndrome. ...
Then again, it seems like most people here are doing their part for the cause.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
From TFA: SIDS -- the sudden, unexplained death of an infant under 1 year old -- is estimated to cause 2,500 infant deaths each year.
Guessed this was referring to the US only but I had to check. CDC page http://www.cdc.gov/SIDS/index.htm states: "Each year in the United States, more than 4,500 infants die suddenly of no obvious cause. Half of these sudden, unexplained infant deaths (SUID) are due to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)For the UK, I found this BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4617976.stm which states "But still over 300 babies every year in the UK are dying as cot deaths" (the Brits seem to prefer the term 'cot death' to SIDS) ... a 75% reduction after awareness was raised by a education campaign in 1991.
From what I understand, SIDS is caused when the brain doesn't properly send the "I'm not getting enough oxygen" message or the baby's unable to do anything about the message being sent. For example, sleeping on the front with fluffy blankets can make it hard for them to move around, even if they get the appropriate signal. In other cases, it may be that the signal itself may not get sent, as that part of the brain isn't developed enough. Things like pacifiers seem to help, perhaps because it maintains a level of awakeness or simply keeps their mouth open.
It may be that the search for a root genetic cause may be futile. The good news is that simple physical precautions such as sleeping on the back and pacifiers seem to cut down on SIDS dramatically.
Even if genetics play a role, it may be different than people think. It's important to realize that evolution often shoots for the "good enough" solution and that we carry around the baggage of billions of years of effort. Perhaps the babies that survived best historically were those who spent their limited growth "energy" on developing skeletal and muscle tissue. The part of the brain that signals low oxygen wasn't very useful during the first few months, as children typically slept in the arms of an adult. Speculation, of course, but it hopefully shows the ways that evolutionary pressures can lead to odd results.
The breathing impulse is driven by an excess of carbon dioxide, not a shortage of oxygen. It doesn't change the conclusion, but the distinction is interesting.
Here's a link discussing what Australia found. I tried to find a news article, but couldn't immediately
d s.htm
http://www.mercola.com/2000/nov/5/victory_over_si
What a wonderfully insulting statement to make, especially for those of who have lost children to SIDS.
You wouldn't happen to be a Scientologist like Tom Cruise, would you?
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
Am I the only one who read that "New Possible SSID Genes Identified"?
:-P
So leaving your router with ssid linksys is hereditary? Who'd a thunk?
This sig rocks the casbah.
As evidenced by the fact that many SIDs cases happen within a day(s) of being vaccinated, but the cause of death is labeled as SIDs. -- Usurper_ii
-=-=-=-=-=-=
More info:
The vast majority of infant deaths caused by vaccinations are put into the vague category of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), also known as "crib death." Officially, SIDS is the second-leading cause of infant deaths in the United States, with between 8,000 and 10,500 deaths annually placed in this category. Some medical studies have estimated that about two-thirds of all SIDS deaths are vaccine-related. If these estimates are accurate, that would mean as many as 6,000 to 7,000 babies die in the U.S. every year because of adverse reactions to vaccines!
But doctors who give these vaccinations very seldom have the honesty to write "death by vaccination" on a death certificate, even if the death occurs just a few days or hours after a vaccination. It is much more comfortable for the medical establishment to blame it on SIDS, the catch-all category invented by doctors for any unexplained death of an infant.
One of the most dangerous of all vaccinations is the DPT vaccine, which is administered to babies beginning at the age of two months. Estimates vary widely as to the number of injuries and fatalities that are caused by the DPT vaccine, but regardless of whose figures you look at, there can be little doubt that this vaccine is a potential threat to any baby.
Medical historian Dr. Harris Coulter -- co-author of DPT: A Shot in the Dark, and author of Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality -- has estimated that two-thirds of the deaths attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in the U.S. are caused by vaccines.
The University of Nevada School of Medicine conducted a survey of 103 American children whose deaths had been labeled as SIDS. The survey found that two-thirds of the children had been given a DPT vaccine within three weeks of their death, and that many had died within 24 hours of the vaccine.
During a 1979 vaccination campaign in Tennessee, there were eight infant deaths following DPT vaccines, including five who died within one day of the vaccination. All eight Tennessee deaths following the vaccinations were labeled SIDS.
The April 1986 issue of Neurology contains a summary of a report given by Dr. William C. Torch at the 34th annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in 1982. The study of "150 DPT postvaccinal deaths" found that about 50 percent of these deaths occurred within 24 hours of the DPT vaccination; 75 percent occurred within 72 hours of the vaccination; and 90 percent occurred within one week of the vaccination. The remaining 10 percent occurred within 20 months of the vaccination, following "protracted reactions."
About 50 percent of the deaths were sudden or "SIDS-like," and the other half followed neurotoxic or systematic symptoms such as coma, paralysis, apnea, shock, seizures, dyspnea (difficulty and pain in breathing), irritability, lethargy or apathy according to the medical journal. Dr. Torch's study also found the peak incidence of SIDS to be at the ages of two and four months, precisely the times when the first two DPT vaccines are routinely administered.
A 1979 medical study at University of California-Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.), sponsored by the FDA, estimated that approximately 1,000 babies die every year in the United States as a direct result of the DPT vaccination, and that these deaths are officially classified as SIDS. This FDA-sponsored study also estimated there are between 11,000 and 12,000 cases of permanent neurological damage every year as a result of the DPT vaccine. This study has been the FDA's only attempt to evaluate more than 40 years of reported adverse reactions to the DPT vaccine. It was published in 1981 in the Journal of Pediatrics, but no attempt was ever made to make these findings available to the general public to inform parents that this vaccine was related to permanent neurological damage and deat
Ron Paul
I'm going to offer an educated opinion about SIDS in general.
Parent: Why did my infant suddenly die?
Doctor1: I don't know.
Doctor2: He died of, umm, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
I think doctor2 is pretending to say something helpful, but really, does tacking syndrome on the end of the problem do us any good?
-Dave
Interesting for one to presume that no evidence of a struggle is present in a suffocation case. Without "evidence of a struggle" due to resistive thrashing around, a body still resists deprivation if only internally able, leaving obvious signs of suffocation. But yeah, "Doesn't take a genius..." kind of shows the intellectual capacity of those which would espouse such a presumption.
Out of curiosity, to what would you attribute the SIDS cases which fall outside of your calculated "majority"?
I'm sure this research will be very lucrative for the Mayo people, in terms of grants from government and biased companies, but seriously, 2 of 135?
As the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons has proven, SIDS, and most assuredly, SHAKEN SIDS, is caused by vaccines.
They are not looking for the cause of SIDS, they are looking to cover up the cause of SIDS, because vaccines area multi-billion dollar business.
You should be skeptical about shaken SIDS, but the fact is, those babies were not shaken, and thousands of innocent parents have been jailed, based on junk science, produced by uncredentialed quacks.
Anyway, you can look at the AAPS and related websites, if you are interested in disovering the truth about SIDS.
What happens if your R2D2 gene mutates?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
kid with a weak spine
kid with a weak skull
kid with weak brain blood vessels
kid that screams for nothing
parent that doesn't handle stress well
parent with sensitive ears
All are at least somewhat genetic.
You're right that "children typically slept in the arms of an adult". We evolved to be this way, which is no good for people who want to sell cribs and cots and such.
Sleeping with the adult is safest, provided that:
a. the adult is not drunk (sleeping pills count)
b. the adult is not obese
c. the bedding is not insanely fluffy or a waterbed
d. the adult does not smoke in bed
(and if any of those risk factors are true, FIX THEM)
Here is an interesting (and potentially life saving) article on Wikipedia concerning the breathing impulse: Shallow water blackout
It's called SuddenInfant Death Syndrome.
It sounds like pure science fiction technobabble, and yet everyone's taking for granted, with no need for comment, that we're routinely doing "molecular autopsies". The forward-thinking people who landed us on the moon might have guessed that we might maybe know how to do a "molecular autopsy" within the next couple of centuries. But they wouldn't really have believed the idea has any place except between paperback covers.
Interesting that hindsight can be 20/20...
slash image word "immune"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The Lancet article you mention, among others in the 80s, are what changed vaccination guidelines from a single dose of the MMR to adding recommended booster shot later in life. NOTE: Medical professionals, who know what the fuck they're talking about, rather than some random assclownery from an "internet independent medical thinker" made the sane judgement that the immune response to the measles vaccine needed boosting later in life. Not, Hey, let's scrap vaccinations!
By the way, complications from the measles virus include seizures, pneumonia, permanent brain damage, and death. The last complication, just in case you didn't know, is untreatable. The other ones are "merely" unpleasant. Remember that when your own kids get measles because you refused to vaccinate them. (If you ever have kids.)
"Could be 1) diets and living conditions improved. 2) The disease ran its course and declined on its own. 3) People developed natural immunity over time. But given the facts, someone with an open mind could conclude that *maybe* we are giving too much credit to vaccines."
Yes, yes, and FUCK NO. People do not "develop natural immunity over time". They develop immunity through natural exposure to microorganisms and a successful immune response, or through genetic accidents they can be born with varying levels of resistance to certain diseases (cystic fibrosis heterozygotes and cholera/tuberculosis, CCR5 mutations and HIV). You can get lucky through herd immunity and not be exposed because others were smarter and got vaccinated. You don't suddenly wake up one day with a magical resistance to influenza H5N1. It's idiots like you that refuse to shut up that depresses the general level of medical knowledge in the public.
"A lot of these childhood diseases actually help strengthen the immune system. Here is an article from The Lancet, which explains that, while the measles vaccine does stop you from getting a rash...the rash is actually the body killing the virus. By stopping the rash, many vaccinated people get MUCH MORE SERIOUS diseases later on in life because they still have the virus, but because of the vaccine, the body can't get rid of it. The biggest majority of these diseases are a pain, but rarely life threatening. I would much rather have measles than lupus erythematosus, Scheurmann's diseases and chondromalacia, which are all chronic degenerative diseases...which means the doctor says, "it sucks to be you." -- Usurper_ii"
ORRRR... you can get your MMR titers checked, and get a booster if needed and avoid measles and its potentially nasty complications. But that would be too easy.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
It seems your literature is no good. It is critical to distinguish sleeping with a parent from sleeping with a sibling.
Adults have very different sleep patterns from kids. A kid will easily roll onto a baby. A healthy adult will not do so.
That said, it isn't a cure-all. Some babies are just meant to die.