Newborn Auditory Brainstem Response and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)-the sudden and unexplained death of a seemingly healthy infant, < 1 year old-may be associated with abnormalities in the brain regions that underlie breathing and arousal during sleep. While post-mortem studies suggest abnormalities in SIDS infants' brainstems, there are no studies of these infants' brainstem function before death. One way to assess the function of the brainstem is with auditory brainstem response (ABR), a routine hearing-screening method that noninvasively measures the brainstem's response to sound. We hypothesized that anomalies in newborns' ABR measures may predict SIDS. We integrated two secondary datasets and examined ABRs of newborns who later died of SIDS (n = 11) compared to a normative sample (n = 198,990), using existing archived records of neonatal ABR results from a sample of newborns born in Florida. As hypothesized, infants who died from SIDS were more likely than non-SIDS infants to have abnormal ABRs as newborns. Children who died of SIDS appeared to have shorter latencies to the trough that follows peak V in the left ear than children without SIDS. However, our expert-rated data failed to replicate this finding, suggesting it is unlikely to reflect a true effect. Understanding the association between SIDS and ABR may facilitate more accurate identification of an infant's risk for SIDS at birth, enabling increased monitoring, which may facilitate interventions and improve survivorship.