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Editor,—In a retrospective study, Kerr and coworkers investigated formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues (stomach, trachea, and lung) of 32 infants who had died of SIDS, and eight control cases, with nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and ELISA of the amplicons. A child was considered as infected withH pylori if the optical density of the ELISA was above the mean value plus 2 SD obtained in the tissue of control infants. The authors found that 28 of the 32 SIDS cases, but only one of the eight control cases fulfilled these criteria. They conclude from their results that H pylori infection may play a causative role in SIDS. We have serious doubts about their results and conclusions.
The control group was extremely small in size and we would expect most, if not all, of these eight infants to have received one or more antibiotics in high doses …