BRISTOL, England, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Researchers at a British university have found pacemaking cells in the brain that could explain sudden infant death syndrome.
The cells trigger gasping when the brain is deprived of oxygen, so infants lacking those cells would not gasp.
"Our studies resolve a 15-year long controversy by showing that pacemaker cells in the brain appear responsible for gasping but not normal breathing," said Professor Julian Paton of the University of Bristol. "Importantly, cot death has been proposed to result from a failure of autoresuscitation and gasping."
SIDS, known in Britain as cot death, has been a mystery for years. In the United States, the incidence was reduced by the "back to sleep" campaign after doctors came to believe that many SIDS victims were smothered by their own bedding while sleeping on their stomachs.
Paton said that the pacemaking cells depend on a protein that keeps a tiny pore open in the cell membrane. When oxygen levels drop, the pore becomes bigger, allowing sodium ions to enter and triggering the gasping reflex.
