The Attached Mother

To continue my Co-sleeping and Breastfeeding theme from earlier I wanted to touch on a news story that is gaining a lot of attention lately. Crib deaths linked to common bacteria.

Researchers have pinpointed two common bacteria that may contribute to crib deaths, even when infants show no sign of tissue damage.

Post-mortem tests on more than 500 babies found high levels of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli in babies who died for unexplained reasons, a team from Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London said on Friday.

One explanation could be that the bacteria release deadly toxins, which damage the young heart, lungs or nervous system.

But bacterial growth may also be a secondary effect of other known risk factors like over-heating, parental smoking and lying a child on its stomach.

Crib death, also known as SIDS, is when babies stop breathing and die for unexplainable reasons in their sleep. Though often suffocation is lumped in with SIDS by people, they are not the same. True SIDS is the term given when doctors can find no reason for the child to have suddenly died.

This new finding has sparked heated debates across the web. Many parents are asking where is the link between the bacteria and the children. Some are asking about tainted formula or vaccines, while others are wondering if there is a defect that allows a bacteria found in everyone’s bodies to become so dangerous. One question that I read asked if there was a difference between those babies who were breastfed and those who were not in the numbers of SIDS cases and this bacteria.

It is sometimes touted that bottle fed infants have a higher risk of SIDS than those who are breastfed. Though the evidence so far is inconclusive, depending on who is doing the research, the connection between the two is certainly there. Especially when co-sleeping(pdf) is added to the mix. However, there is one important connection that I want to point out. The anti-bodies found in breastmilk. As Dr. Sears points out

Between two and six months of age (which, you’ll recall, is also the peak period of SIDS risk), a baby’s immunity is lowest and the vulnerability to infection is highest. The newborn baby derives much of his immunity from his mother’s antibodies while in the womb. After birth these antibodies gradually disappear. Meanwhile, baby is making his own antibodies, so that by age six to nine months he is more capable of defending himself against infection. Between two and six months, when the antibodies derived prenatally from mother are at low levels and baby has not yet made enough of his own, the immunity factors in breastmilk fill in, taking over where the placenta left off and protecting the baby while his own immune system matures.
One of the ways in which breastmilk protects the infection-vulnerable infant is through the enteromammary immune system. When mother is exposed to a new germ, glands in her intestine make infection-fighting cells specifically for this germ. These special cells travel through her bloodstream to her breasts, where they announce the presence of the enemy germ. The breast glands respond by manufacturing antibodies, which are delivered to the baby through the milk. Because she can make new antibodies better and more quickly than her tiny baby can, mother updates her baby’s immunity with every feeding.

Of course sleeping position has a large roll in SIDS, including in the amount of bacteria they breath in from their own bedding. Something that I am sure is a factor here. However, while we are looking at bacteria as having some connection to SIDS I cannot help but point to one other study pointed out by (again) Dr. Sears

The authors of the NICHD study concluded that SIDS rates were higher in formula-fed infants even after correcting for other factors, such as socioeconomic status. They also concluded that breastfeeding was protective against respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, two factors that have been implicated in increasing the risk of SIDS. SIDS infants between two and eleven months of age showed increased upper respiratory infections within two weeks prior to death if they had never been breastfed. Another important finding in this study was that 74 percent of Caucasian and 86 percent of African-American infants who died of SIDS were mostly, or only, fed artificial baby milk (formula). The researchers in this study concluded that infants who were never breastfed had two to three times a greater risk of SIDS.

Though none of us know what, if any, the connection between bacteria and SIDS actually means one does wonder if there might be a connection between the bacteria and breastfeeding. Of course there might also be a connection between hospital births and the high levels of infection. Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and E. coli. are the most common hospital acquired illnesses. The possible connections are too many to name right now, all we can do is wait to see if there is more information as more research is done.

Alan Craft, professor of child health at the University of Newcastle, said the findings were important but there might not be a simple answer.

health, news, SIDS, breastfeeding