Local doctor believes inner ear damage in babies could lead to SIDS, launches research



SEATTLE --  It’s the leading cause of death for kids under 1 years old, killing 2,000 babies a year in the United States.

A local doctor is on a mission to find the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), launching a comprehensive research effort this month.

“You always wonder,” Saori Takayoshi said.

Sixteen years years later, the medical mystery that claimed her baby's life consumes Takayoshi.

“She went down for a nap, she was no longer breathing,” Takayoshi said.

Her baby girl, Shea, died from SIDS.

“There was no rhyme or reason; at the time there was no active research going on,” Takayoshi said.

But now there is -- and she's helping to raise money for a local doctor who is searching for a cause for SIDS.

“A year ago we didn’t have the funding to do this project,” Dr. Daniel Rubens said Thursday.

Rubens, who works at Seattle Children's Medical Center, is now partnering with doctors in England to test out his theory -- that damage to a baby's inner ear at birth could play a role.

“The ones with the inner ear damage, they don't make the movement to escape, and they don't arouse, don't wake up quite in the right way,” Rubens said.

Rubens has discovered this problem in mice -- the ones with inner ear damage can't seem to sense when their breathing is compromised during sleep.

“It's as if the problem is invisible to them, they stay in it, that's what we are seeing so far in our research,” Rubens said.

Until the medical community knows more, Rubens wants parents to pay attention to the risk factors -- don't smoke around your baby and make sure they sleep on their backs, not on their tummies.

Rubens says he is not suggesting that SIDS only occurs because of inner ear dysfunction but he believes it could play an important role.

“I do feel that there is a specific problem that these babies have,” Rubens said.

It’s a matter of finding the research, so they can detect the at-risk babies before a fatal event. Rubens says the ultimate goal of the research is to develop a screening tool at birth that would identify infants at high risk.

Takayoshi will do her part to help further Rubens’ research, it’s her way of creating a legacy for her late 6-month-old baby girl.

“A lot of SIDS parents go through is that they want the world to know their child was here,” Takayoshi said.