Metabolites May Help Identify Babies With Elevated SIDS Risk, Study Finds

NBC News (9/9, Bendix) reports “a new study has found that a particular group of chemicals called metabolites, which are tested for as part of routine newborn screenings, could identify babies with an elevated risk” for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The “heel stick” test is required “for infants in all 50 states and involves collecting a blood sample from a baby’s heel shortly after birth.” The study “found that a group of eight metabolites included on the newborn screening panel was associated with SIDS.” The findings were published in JAMA Pediatrics. MedPage Today (9/9, Henderson) reports that “among 32 infants in the test set with model-predicted probability greater than 0.5, 62.5% had SIDS.” These babies “had 14.4 times the odds...of SIDS compared with those with a model-predicted probability less than 0.1.”