Brain stem gliosis in the victims of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS): a sign of retarded maturation?

The study was aimed to evaluate possible relation between the probability of brain stem gliosis at the autopsy in infants who died of SIDS and of other known causes of death and some major infants characteristics. 131 infants (78 boys, 53 girls) who died in St. Petersburg in 1983 to 1989 of SIDS and 60 infants (37 boys, 23 girls) who died suddenly during the same period of time of other than SIDS known causes of death without signs of inborn malformations, tumours and intrauterine infections entered the study. Stepwise logistic regression was used in data analysis. No statistically significant association was found between the probability of brain stem gliosis and the following explanatory variables: gender, gestational and calendar age, weight at birth and at death. It was shown that the probability of brain stem gliosis depended of the cause of death (whether SIDS or not) and postconceptional age, two variables interacting. The probability of brain stem gliosis decreased with growing postconceptional age in the infants from both groups, less prominent in SIDS babies. The findings may serve an argument that delayed brain myelination and maturation is more often the case in the babies who died of SIDS, and that excessive brain stem gliosis may serve a marker of biological immaturity in a part of SIDS victims.