Abstracts

Abstract

Background: Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) remains the leading cause of death among infants less than 1 year of age. Disturbed expression of some neurotransmitters and their receptors has been shown in the central nervous system of SIDS victims but no biological abnormality of the peripheral vago-cardiac system has been demonstrated to date. The present study aimed to seek vago-cardiac abnormalities in SIDS victims. The cardiac level of expression of muscarinic receptors, as well as acetylcholinesterase enzyme activity were investigated. Methodology/Principal Findings: Left ventricular samples and blood samples were obtained from autopsies of SIDS and children deceased from non cardiac causes. Binding experiments performed with [H]NMS, a selective muscarinic ligand, in cardiac membrane preparations showed that the density of cardiac muscarinic receptors was increased as shown by a more than doubled Bmax value in SIDS (n = 9 SIDS versus 8 controls). On average, the erythrocyte acetylcholinesterase enzyme activity was also significantly increased (n = 9 SIDS versus 11 controls). Conclusions: In the present study, it has been shown for the first time that cardiac muscarinic receptor overexpression is associated with SIDS. The increase of acetylcholinesterase enzyme activity appears as a possible regulatory mechanism. Citation: Livolsi A, Niederhoffer N, Dali-Youcef N, Rambaud C, Olexa C, et al. (2010) Cardiac Muscarinic Receptor Overexpression in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9464. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009464 Editor: Rory Edward Morty, University of Giessen Lung Center, Germany Received October 7, 2009; Accepted February 8, 2010; Published March 1, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Livolsi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This study was funded by the French Ministery of Research. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: Pascal.Bousquet@medecine.u-strasbg.fr