LETTER

Vagal overactivity: a risk factor of sudden infant death syndrome?

T Shojaei-Brosseau¹, C Bonaïti-Pellie¹, S Lyonnet², J Feingold², V Lucet³

¹ Unité de Recherche en Epidémiologie des Cancers, INSERM U521, Villejuif, France
² Unité de recherche sur les Handicaps Génétiques de l’Enfant, INSERM, U393, Paris, France
³ Centre de Cardiologie Infantile du Château des Côtes, Les Loges-en-Josas, France

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr T Shojaei-Brosseau, Service de Biostatistiques, Institut Curie, 70 rue Mouffetard, 75005 Paris, France;
taraneh.shojaei@curie.net

Keywords: risk factor; vagal overactivity; sudden infant death syndrome

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Since early 1990, the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has dropped sharply because of public health campaigns decrying the dangers of the prone sleep position. The other known risk factors, such as preterm birth and young maternal age, are less susceptible to prevention campaigns.¹

Disordered autonomic function, including cardiorespiratory control, has been suggested to be involved in SIDS.^2,3 Vagal overactivity (VO), characterised by breath holding spells and repeated syncopes in specific circumstances, has been described as a manifestation of autonomic dysfunction.⁴ To investigate a possible relation between VO and SIDS, we investigated 65 children presenting documented VO; for example, clinical characteristics and a positive test for eyeball compression and/or electrocardiographic monitoring. Parents of these children were interviewed about their family history, especially with respect to the occurrence of SIDS among their other children.

Among their siblings, five of 126 had died of SIDS. All five children were full . . . [Full text of this article]

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