Simple blood test could identify babies at risk of SIDS
IT is every parent’s nightmare and one Dr Carmel Harrington knows all too well — losing a baby to SIDS. Now Dr Harrington is on the brink of developing a blood test that could identify vulnerable babies at risk and she needs your help.
NSW
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A SIMPLE blood test may soon end the terrifying nightmare of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome by identifying those babies who are at risk.
Yet this great hope comes out of two separate tragedies that changed the life of lead researcher Dr Carmel Harrington — losing her son and seeing a friend’s child die.
And, although it offers enormous promise, her research is struggling to find money and has been forced to turn to crowd-funding.
It has been a long journey for Dr Harrington.
She had begun her career as a biochemist but abandoned her passion because of the never-ending fight for funding.
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She retrained as a lawyer and had three children, Alexander and twins Charlotte and Damien.
Nearly three decades ago, a few days before the twins’ second birth, Damien died in his sleep. “He was totally well,” Dr Harrington told The Sunday Telegraph.
“He had a normal dinner, a bath and bottle. That morning when we woke up, I said to my husband that was the most perfect sleep I’d had as Charlotte did not wake me up.
“My husband went in and Damien had died. There was just no indication, it was unbelievable, it is so unreal that can happen,” she said.
“I just knew there had to be something wrong with these babies but the experts said they did not know, they told me to go home and have more babies and that really irked me, so I started doing my own research.”
Then came the next pivotal moment.
“I was at playgroup and a mum came in with her newborn asleep on her tummy. I wanted to say something but I was trying to get on with my life, I did not want to upset her and so I said nothing,” she said.
“The next morning I got a phone call. Amelia had died in her sleep during the night.
“I walked into my boss’s office and resigned and said: ‘I’m going back to science’.”
Ignoring the fears of her friends and family that she was becoming obsessed, she completed a PhD in SIDS and autonomic function.
Now a sleep expert based at The Children’s Hospital Westmead, her research suggests babies who die in their sleep may have deficiencies in their autonomic nervous system — the system responsible for automatic functions such as breathing and heartbeat.
Dr Harrington and her team have been looking at the blood of babies that have been found blue in their beds, revived and taken to the emergency department.
They have discovered a protein that could identify vulnerable babies.
“These babies had arousal deficits in sleep. We found something unusual and unexpected. We discovered this protein and we believe it could be an identifier,” she said.
“We want to develop an easy blood test to check for this protein but it will cost $100,000 and there is no money, so I decided to crowd-fund it.”
To help go to www.mycause.com.au/page/184401/damiens-legacy