Viruses were shown to be present in the respiratory tract in 200 of 763 cases of the sudden infant death syndrome studied in the nine years 1974-82. Epidemiological and pathological evidence suggested that the distribution of viruses in the sudden infant death syndrome differs between infants aged 3 months or less and those aged over 3 months: the incidence of detection of virus was 14% in the ...

Public and professional awareness of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has increased in the 28 years since the establishment of the National Sudden Infant Death Foundation, now called the National SIDS Alliance.' Similarly, awareness of child abuse has increased in the 30 years since the publication of the first article on the battered child. In the majority of cases, when an infant younger t...

The authors, propose that also a sudden death during pregnancy that remains unexplained after an in-depth autopsy, should be considered as a syndrome and referred with the acronym “SIUDS”, e.g., “Sudden Intrauterine Unexplained Death Syndrome”, like “SIDS” for “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome”. This suggested definition is based on the presence in these pathologies of common developmental abnormal...

CONTEXT Sudden infant death syndrome is the leading cause of postneonatal death in developed countries. Little is known about risks linked with parental mental illness per se or how such risks are modified by specific psychiatric conditions and by maternal vs paternal psychopathological abnormalities. OBJECTIVE To investigate cause-specific postneonatal death, including sudden infant death sy...

Data on the pressure volume characteristics of left lungs obtained from 23 babies dying from sudden infant death syndrome were compared with results from 18 length-matched babies dying from established but primarily non-pulmonary causes. Volume distension at 30 cm of water and deflation flow volume characteristics were very similar in the two groups. These findings do not suggest that babies dy...

This concise text focuses on the Oxford Record Linkage Studies of factors associated with sudden infant death and the Foundation for the Study of Infant Death surveys of psychosocial stress experienced by bereaved parents. Its focus is on sudden infant deaths in Britain, but the authors make frequent reference to North American studies as well. The book begins with a brief history of sudden inf...

Among the 45,204 live births in Birmingham in the three calendar years 1981-3, there were 218 postneonatal deaths, giving a postneonatal mortality rate of 4.82 per 1000 live births. Postneonatal mortality rates were 4.22 for whites, 5.91 for Asians (relative risk 1.26, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.04 to 1.53) and 8.20 for Afro-Caribbeans (relative risk 1.78, 95% CI 1.25 to 2.55). Among Asians...