by The presence of brief seizures, accompanied by muscle convulsions, appears to be a potential cause of sudden and unexpected deaths in young children, which usually occur during sleep.
It is estimated that 1 death occurs per 1,000 live births, being more common in children under 1 year of age, although it can also occur between 1 and 14 years of age.
A study published in ‘Neurology‘ has analyzed data on more than 300 cases from medical records and video evidence donated by families to document the unexplained deaths of seven young children between the ages of 1 and 3 potentially attributable to seizures. These seizures lasted less than 60 seconds and occurred within 30 minutes immediately before each child’s death.
For decades, researchers have sought an explanation for sudden death events in children. A link has been suggested between those with a history of febrile seizures (seizures accompanied by fever).
Previous research had reported that children who died regretfully and unexpectedly were 10 times more likely to have had febrile seizures than children who died not regretfully and unexpectedly.
The new study involved an analysis by a team from the New York University Langone Health Center (US) of the rare cases of sudden death for which there were also home video recordings, either from security systems or commercial crib cameras, made while each child was sleeping on the night or afternoon of their death.
Five of seven recordings were playing non-stop at the time and showed direct sound and visible movement indicative of a seizure. The remaining two were activated by sound or movement, but only a suggestion that a muscle seizure had occurred. Besides, only one young child had a documented history of febrile seizures. All children in the study had previously undergone an autopsy that revealed no definitive cause of death.
“Our study, although small, offers the first direct evidence that seizures may be responsible for some sudden deaths in children, which are not usually observed during sleep,” highlights the study’s principal investigator, Laura Gould.
Gould lost her daughter, Maria, at the age of 15 months in 1997, a tragedy that prompted the NYU Langone Health Center’s Registry of these cases.
The study offers the first evidence that seizures may be responsible for some sudden deaths in children.
Laura Gould
New York University Langone Health Center
“The findings of this study show that seizures are much more common than the patients’ medical records suggest, and that more research is needed to determine whether seizures are common in sleep-related deaths in young children and, potentially, in infants, older children and adults,” says the researcher. study director and neurologist Orrin Devinsky.
Devinsky believes that “seizures may be the ‘smoking gun’ that medicine has been looking for to understand why these children die.”
Furthermore, he adds, “Studying this phenomenon can also provide critical information about many other deaths.».
epilepsy
Researchers acknowledge that more research is needed to determine precisely how seizures with or without fever can induce sudden death. Previous research in patients with epilepsy, Devinsky says, points to difficulty breathing that is known to occur immediately after a seizure and can lead to death. This has been found to happen more frequently in patients with epilepsy, as well as in the children involved in the study, while they are sleeping on their stomach and without anyone witnessing the death.
To confirm this, he continues, “it will be necessary to carry out a continuous monitoring of infant deaths and improvements in health records to track how often these seizures precede death, he explains. “Seizure-related deaths are underreported in people with and without epilepsy.”
