by A recent study conducted by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine has identified seizures as a potential cause of sudden, unexpected deaths in young children, particularly during sleep. Each year, over 3,000 families in the United States experience the tragic loss of a baby or young child without any explanation. While most cases involve infants diagnosed with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), an estimated 400 cases involve children aged 1 and older, known as sudden unexplained death in children (SUDC), with the majority of these cases occurring in toddlers.
The study findings were derived from a registry of more than 300 SUDC cases, which was established by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine ten years ago. By analysing extensive medical records and video evidence provided by families, the researchers were able to document the unexplained deaths of seven toddlers between the ages of 1 and 3 that could potentially be attributed to seizures. These seizures lasted less than 60 seconds and occurred within 30 minutes before each child’s death.
Researchers have been investigating the causes of sudden death events in children for decades, with previous studies noting a correlation between a history of febrile seizures (seizures accompanied by fever) and sudden, unexpected deaths. Earlier research also reported that children who died suddenly and unexpectedly were ten times more likely to have had febrile seizures than those who did not experience such incidents. Nearly one-third of the SUDC cases registered at NYU Langone Health also included febrile seizures.
The study, published in the journal Neurology, involved the analysis of rare SUDC cases for which home video recordings were available. These videos, captured by security systems or commercial crib cameras, showed the children sleeping on the night or afternoon of their deaths. Out of the seven recordings analysed, five were continuously running and depicted both the sound and motion indicative of a seizure occurring. The other two recordings were triggered by sound or motion, with only one indicating that a muscle convulsion, a sign of a seizure, had taken place. Additionally, only one toddler had a documented history of febrile seizures. All the children in the study had previously undergone an autopsy, which did not reveal a definitive cause of death.
Lead investigator Laura Gould, a research assistant professor at NYU Langone, whose own daughter tragically passed away from SUDC, emphasizes the significance of the study’s findings, stating that seizures may be responsible for some sudden deaths in children that typically go unnoticed during sleep. She notes that without the video evidence, the cause of death would not have been linked to a seizure.
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a professor at NYU Langone and the study’s senior investigator and neurologist, suggests that convulsive seizures may provide the answer that medical science has been searching for to explain these deaths. He also explains that studying this phenomenon could offer critical insights into many other types of deaths, including those attributed to SIDS and epilepsy. Further research is needed to determine the exact relationship between seizures, with or without fever, and sudden death. Previous research involving epilepsy patients suggests that breathing difficulties, which are known to occur immediately after a seizure, could lead to death. This phenomenon occurs more frequently in epilepsy patients and in the children involved in the study when they are sleeping face-down on their stomachs and without anyone witnessing their death. Continuous monitoring of child deaths and improvements in health records will be crucial to confirming these findings, as seizure-related deaths are currently underreported in individuals with and without epilepsy.
To conduct the study, experts in forensic pathology, neurology, and sleep medicine analysed each video recording for video quality, sound, and motion. Through this analysis, they were able to identify which toddlers exhibited signs of muscle convulsions, indicating the occurrence of seizures before their death, as well as the timing of these events. Access to the videos remained strictly limited to the researchers involved in the study.
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1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
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