Parenting News: Wakefulness Not to Blame for Higher SIDS Deaths in Boys
SUNDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) – Experts have long known that sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is more common in boys than girls, but a new study suggests that gender differences in levels of wakefulness are not to blame.
In fact, the researchers found that infant boys are more easily aroused from sleep than girls.
“Since the incidence of SIDS is increased in male infants, we had expected the male infants to be more difficult to arouse from sleep and to have fewer full arousals than the female infants,” senior author Rosemary S.C. Horne, a senior research fellow at the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, said in a news release. “In fact, we found the opposite when infants were younger at two to four weeks of age, and we were surprised to find that any differences between the male and female infants were resolved by the age of two to three months, which is the most vulnerable age for SIDS,” Horne said.
About 60 percent of infants who die from SIDS are male.
In the study, published in the Aug. 1 issue of Sleep, the Australian team tested 50 healthy infants by blowing a puff of air into their nostrils in order to wake them from sleep. At two to four weeks of age, the strength of the puff of air needed to arouse the infants was much lower in males than in females. This difference was no longer significant by ages two to three months, when SIDS risk peaks. Continue Reading.
