Thread by @JonMarronMD

I've seen this report multiple times on my feed today so wanted to comment.

This is interesting (& promising) work but the report (biospace.com/article/resear…) VASTLY overstates the research findings.

#SIDS is awful, but we need to be careful with messaging here

A brief 🧵
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https://twitter.com/pedsmd2b/status/1524780913816653824

I cared for a few babies in residency who died of SIDS - they were the most awful experiences I've had in medicine (& I'm a peds oncologist, so that says something)

I can only imagine how heart-wrenching it is for families, many of whom feel blamed for their child's death
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Some families whose babies die of SIDS are made to feel it's their fault

Others blame themselves, even if others dont blame them (Vaccines are sometimes blamed, but thats a diff story)

Experts now often say to families that, even if the cause is unknown, its NOT their fault
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So there is guilt, & sadness, & on top of that, the hope that we all feel to better understand this awful event, & the hope that we can one day learn to prevent it

That is the context in which this new study comes out, with 1 circulated report here: biospace.com/article/resear…
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And another report here: abc.net.au/news/2022-05-0…
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Importantly, though, the actual paper (in @eBioMedicine) doesnt make nearly the claims that the news reports do

Here's a link to the published paper (not paywalled!): sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
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The authors indeed find a statistically significant relationship between BChE levels from the newborn blood spots on day 2-3 of life and later SIDS death, when compared to matched controls
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But this was a study that included only 26 SIDS cases -- this is a rare entity, but that's an extremely small sample

Further, while they matched for gender and age, there are many other factors that could play a role here that were not measured/accounted for
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Importantly, the authors acknowledge this, arguing for future work to explore these findings further

While it can be argued that the paper's authors are too definitive re their conclusions/implications (IMO, they are), they go nowhere near as far as news reports, like here
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So we need to pump the breaks on claiming we've "figured out" SIDS, much less that we have a way to prevent it

This is exciting research in a field that needs it. The researchers (interestingly, one of whom actually had a child tragically die of SIDS) should be commended
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I cant imagine how it feels to have a child who died of SIDS, but circulating misleading info (false belief that we've "pinpointed the cause" for SIDS) or giving parents false hope that future kids wont die of SIDS serves no one

We can be excited about this work w/o that
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TL;DR: This is a⬆️exciting finding that COULD be an early step toward understanding (& ultimately preventing) SIDS

But reports overstating these findings arent helpful & might be counterproductive (or even harmful)

Full paper here, worth a read: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…!

/fin