Morphometric investigation of carotid body in sudden infant death syndrome.

BACKGROUND The pathomechanism of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has not been clarified yet. The high rate of early progenitor cells in carotid body has been reported as a pathognomic feature for SIDS. AIM AND STUDY DESIGN: The morphometric analysis was done by NIKON Eclipse microscope with a morphometric program Lucia G. SUBJECTS This study was designed to investigate the structure and developmental state of carotid body in SIDS and non-SIDS cases. A comparison was made between the rates of dark and early progenitor cells. OUTCOME MEASURES The Kruskal-Wallis test showed a significantly higher number of progenitor cells in the SIDS group than in controls (p=0.0003). RESULTS AND CONCLUSION In this study on Hungarian SIDS cases we confirmed the observation that infants who died suddenly have an underdeveloped carotid body.