Interesting thoughts, but I'd think the seasonal variations would be greater if infection were a big deal as well as a huge bias toward daycare participants. Not a journal I can find locally either. I don't know how long you've been at Duke, but after the studies came out about simply sleeping infants sunny side up, our hospital nursery nurses had a cow when our pediatric group requested (four months prior the AAP recommendation) that our babies be kept on their back. Two nurses threatened quite seriously to quit. The unit manager requested we call around to check the "standard of care" in our area. We called Duke, Chapel Hill, and ECU. All were prone sleeping in the regular and high risk nurseries. We even called Johns Hopkins where Frank Oski occasionally attended in the nursery (he had given a talk that summer I attended about "10 Major Changes on the Horizon in Pediatrics" in which he reviewed the New Zeland/Australian papers on the subject). Johns Hopkins said they sleep their babies on their stomachs except when Oski attended. The Univ weren't much help, but we did it anyway. My point is this: academics often chase the exotic, making a big deal over a 5% tendency. Then miss the boat when a huge factor (50%) is discovered by some other institution. (The NIH syndrome - Not Invented Here) Do you know where on the web we can see abtracts of the articles you mentioned? g barden wrote: > > SIDS is most likely multifactorial . However, much of the current literature > on the problems of prone sleeping has an infectious focus. There is an increase > in > NP temperature in prone infants that leads to increased colonization of the > naso-pharynx. > Elevated temperatures also can stimulate toxin production in NP bacteria. > See Fems Immunology And Medical Microbiology 1999;25. > The whole issue is devoted to the role of infections and bacterial toxins in > SIDS. > > "It was my impression that the apnea-SIDS theoretical connection was pretty > well exploded some time ago, when its chief proponent's research was > discredited--he had drawn his conclusions from only 5 cases with 3 of them > within the same family --later found to have been infanticides, and not SIDS > (the infamous Waneta Hoyt case). In addition some of the evidence was > fudged. . . 25 years after the fact the Mom confessed & was convicted. (It's > all very well laid out in a book called "The Death of Innocents" - I don't > recall the authors' names). Consequently there is no evidence in the > scientific literature (since no one was able to replicate the original > researcher's findings) to relate SIDS to some failure to resume breathing > after a pause or to abnormalities of the sleep cycle. A death due to prone > sleeping is asphyxiation, not SIDS. SIDS by definition has no discernable > cause. Am I right or wrong? > Stephanie Walker, RN, FNP" >