Nearly one baby every hour each day dies abruptly. An estimated 7,000 babies die each year without warning, according to sids-network.org. Parents are left clueless after the death as the possible causes remain unknown even after undergoing autopsy. All because of the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is the unexplained death of babies usually occurring during sleep and striking under unexpected circumstances.
Even a healthy one-year old baby may be a victim of the condition which is often simply attributed to physical and environmental factors.
Studies have shown that babies with physical conditions including brain abnormalities, low birth weight and respiratory infection have higher risk of dying an unexplained death.
Still some studies indicated that an infant’s sleeping position may also be a cause. Babies sleeping on their stomach side are more prone as they may suffer more difficulty in breathing. According to the Mayo Clinic site, those sleeping on soft surfaces and with their parents are also at risk.
To address the problem, various newborn screening tests are being employed as a means of identifying inborn disorders. For instance, dried blood spot screening, usually available in hospitals, can effectively screen the newborn of many metabolic disorders.
This type of screening, however, can only detect less than 50 metabolic disorders as indicated by metascree.com. Given that there are far more metabolic disorders that place an infant in danger of SIDS, a new process called Metascreen, an expanded, advanced and non-invasive metabolic screening service, was developed.
Metascreen can detect up to more than 100 inborn errors of metabolism (IEM) through a painless method that uses the child’s urine sample collected after 48 hours of birth.
