Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Occurs More Frequently In Boys Than In Girls

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Occurs More Frequently In Boys Than In Girls.
Experts have covet known that swift infant passing syndrome (SIDS) is more common in boys than girls, but a new study suggests that gender differences in levels of wakefulness are not to blame. In fact, the researchers found that infant boys are more simply aroused from nap than girls. "Since the incidence of SIDS is increased in male infants, we had expected the virile infants to be more difficult to arouse from sleep and to have fewer full arousals than the female infants," major author Rosemary SC Horne, a senior research fellow at the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, said in a flash release.

And "In fact, we found the opposite when infants were younger at two to four weeks of age, and we were surprised to judge that any differences between the male and female infants were resolved by the discretion of two to three months, which is the most vulnerable age for SIDS". About 60 percent of infants who give up the ghost from SIDS are male.

In the study, published in the Aug 1, 2010 issuance of Sleep, the Australian team tested 50 healthy infants by blowing a puffery of air into their nostrils in order to wake them from sleep. At two to four weeks of age, the pertinacity of the puff of air needed to arouse the infants was much lower in males than in females. This reformation was no longer significant by ages two to three months, when SIDS risk peaks.

Research On Animals Has Shown That Women Are More Prone To Stress

Research On Animals Has Shown That Women Are More Prone To Stress.
When it comes to stress, women are twice as credible as men to come out stress-induced disease, such as gloom and/or post-traumatic stress, and now a new study in rats could relieve researchers understand why. The team has uncovered evidence in animals that suggests that males service from having a protein that regulates and diminishes the brain's stress signals - a protein that females lack. What's more, the crew uncovered what appears to be a molecular double-whammy, noting that in animals a promote protein that helps process such stress signals more effectively - rendition them more potent - is much more effective in females than in males.

The differing dynamics, reported online June 15 in the history Molecular Psychiatry, have so far only been observed in male and female rats. However, Debra Bangasser of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and colleagues suggest that if this psychopathology is at reflected in humans it could move to the development of new drug treatments that target gender-driven differences in the molecular processing of stress.