Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, including details on sids, causes, prevention, statistics.

SIDS: genetic and environmental influences may cause arrhythmia in this silent killer.

Makielski JC

Department of Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine Section and Department of Physiology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53792, USA. jcm@medicine.wisc.edu

In this issue of the JCI, Bowers et al. show that the common polymorphism of the cardiac voltage-gated sodium channel, type Valpha (SCN5A), designated S1103Y, found in African Americans is associated with an increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Wild-type and mutant SCN5A channels both functioned typically under normal conditions in vitro, but exposure to acidic intracellular pH levels such as those found in respiratory acidosis--a known risk factor for SIDS--produced abnormal gain-of-function late reopenings of S1103Y channels, behavior that is often associated with cardiac arrhythmias. These pathologic late reopenings were suppressed by low levels of the channel-blocking drug mexiletine. These findings provide an excellent illustration of a causal relationship between the interaction of the environment and genetic background in SIDS and also raise interesting questions about the linkage of a genetic abnormality with a clinical phenotype.

Published 2 February 2006 in J Clin Invest, 116(2): 297-9.
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