Is shock a key element in the pathology of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)?
In developed countries, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the most common cause of death for infants between 1 month and 1 year of age. The etiology of SIDS is likely to be multifactorial, and current paradigms often describe three overlapping elements of risk. Those elements are a critical developmental period, a vulnerable infant, and one or more exogenous stressors. In the triple-risk model, SIDS infants are described as having an underlying vulnerability in cardiorespiratory control in the central nervous system during a critical period when autonomic control is developing. This vulnerability might affect the response to exogenous stressors, including prone sleeping position, hypoxia, and increased carbon dioxide. In the common bacterial hypothesis and fatal triangle, the focus is on the stressors. In the first, a combination of common respiratory infections can cause SIDS in an infant during a developmentally vulnerable period. This theory also includes 3 factors of vulnerabi
