SFU researchers discover gene variant in sudden infant deaths
Posted April 7, 2019 10:28 am.
Last Updated April 7, 2019 3:21 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – There are few things more devastating than the sudden, unexplained death of an infant. Researchers at Simon Fraser University have made an important finding which could eventually save lives.
It’s a previously undiscovered gene variant, explains Professor Glen Tibbits with SFU and BC Children’s Hospital, and the specific mutation could cause sudden cardiac arrest.
“A lot of the infants die without any known cause of death and it’s a challenge to find out how they died,” he says. “We think that maybe 20 to 30 per cent of them are actually having cardiac arrest because of a gene they inherited with a mutation or a variant.”
Tibbits says this mutation affects how calcium in the heart cells is handled.
“We started noticing arrhythmogenic patterns, the electrical activity was askew, it wasn’t normal, and when we ran it even higher it got worse to the point that it was almost chaotic, electrically.”
Tibbits says in the future, when technology and the law allow, gene editing could be done to correct this mutation before a child is born.
