KIDNEYS BLAMED IN TOT DEATHS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993                   TAG: 9302090192
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Short
KIDNEYS BLAMED IN TOT DEATHS
A severe kidney disorder may explain many cases of sudden infant death syndrome, but the finding does not yet point the way to prevention, a British doctor said Monday.
Dr. Dick van Velzen, professor of fetal and infant pathology at Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital, studied 24 infants who died of no known cause in the first six months of life. He found two-thirds had a deficiency of nephrons, the tiny filters within the kidney.
He said this may leave the infants vulnerable to a range of infections.
The finding does not offer immediate hope for prevention.
"It explains why these children die and why they are vulnerable to things normal children don't die from," van Velzen said.
The study will be published in the May issue of Pediatric Pathology, an international scientific journal.
"The merit in the study is that they have looked at an aspect of sudden infant death syndrome that has not been studied before, but it's still very preliminary," said Dr. Gonzalez Crussi, a pediatric pathologist at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago and editor-in-chief of Pediatric Pathology.
Kidneys are crucial to drain the body of toxins produced by infections or the breakdown of food and fluids.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB