Health
Child seizures caught on video may be a clue to solving unexplained crib deaths
The last bedtime of 17-month-old Hayden Fell’s life was heartbreakingly normal. Crib video shows the toddler in pajamas playing happily as his parents and sister sang “Wheels on the Bus” with his twin brother.
The next morning, Hayden’s dad couldn’t wake him. The tot had become one of several hundred seemingly healthy U.S. toddlers and preschoolers each year who suddenly die in their sleep and autopsies can’t tell why. But Hayden’s crib cam was recording all night — and offered a clue.
Seizures during sleep are a potential cause of at least some cases of sudden unexplained death in childhood, or SUDC, researchers at NYU Langone Health reported Thursday after analyzing home monitoring video that captured the deaths of seven sleeping toddlers.
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Similar to SIDS in babies, SUDC is the term when these mysterious deaths occur any time after a child’s first birthday. Little is known about SUDC but some scientists have long suspected seizures may play a role. In addition to some genetics research, scientists also have found that a history of fever-related seizures was about 10 times more likely among the children who died suddenly than among youngsters the same age.
The new study is very small but offers the first direct evidence of a seizure link. Five of the toddlers died shortly after movements deemed to be a brief seizure by a team of forensic pathologists, a seizure specialist and a sleep specialist. A sixth child probably also had one, according to findings published online by the journal Neurology.
Seventeen-month-old Hayden Fell, of Bel Air, Md., was one of the hundreds of American babies who die in their sleep each year, seemingly without explanation. But the baby monitor camera recording Hayden that night offered a clue. (Fell via Associated Press)
“It’s hard to watch,” said Dr. Orrin Devinsky, an NYU neurologist and the study’s senior author. “We have video which is in some ways the best evidence we may ever get of what’s happened to these kids.”
The recordings can’t prove fevers triggered the seizures but researchers noted several toddlers had signs of mild infections. One, Hayden, previously had such febrile seizures when he’d catch childhood bugs.
That raises a big question: Fever-related seizures are hugely common in young children, affecting 2% to 5% of tots between ages 6 months and 5 years. While scary, they’re hardly ever harmful. So how could anyone tell if occasionally, they might be a warning of something more serious?
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“I thought he would be fine and it was just a matter of letting this run its course,” said Justin Fell, explaining how multiple doctors told the Bel Air, Maryland, family not to worry whenever Hayden had a fever-sparked seizure. Instead, “it was every parent’s nightmare.”
Laura Gould, one of the NYU researchers, understands that agonizing frustration. In 1997 she lost her 15-month-old daughter Maria to what later was named SUDC — the toddler woke up one night with a fever, was her usual happy self the next morning but died during a nap. Gould later co-founded the nonprofit SUDC Foundation and helped establish NYU’s registry of about 300 deaths — including the first seven videos offered by families — for research.
Gould doesn’t want families to be scared by the new findings — they won’t change advice about febrile seizures. Instead, researchers next will have to determine if it’s possible to tease out differences between those very rare children who die and the masses who are fine after an occasional seizure.
“If we can figure out the children at risk, maybe we can change their outcome,” she said.
It’s hard for autopsies to find evidence of a seizure so using video from home monitors to reevaluate deaths “is actually very clever,” said Dr. Marco Hefti, a neuropathologist at the University of Iowa who wasn’t involved with the study but has also investigated SUDC.
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“It’s not that parents need to be stressing out, panicking about every febrile seizure,” he cautioned. But Hefti said it’s time for additional research, including animal studies and possibly sleep studies in children, to better understand what’s going on.
SUDC is estimated to claim over 400 lives a year in the U.S. Most occur during sleep. And just over half, about 250 deaths a year, are in 1- to 4-year-olds.
Sudden death in babies occurs more often and gets more public attention — along with more research funding that in turn has uncovered risk factors and prevention advice such as to put infants to sleep on their backs. But SUDC happens to youngsters long past the age of SIDS. The Fells had never even heard of it until Hayden died.
Hayden experienced his first seizure shortly before his first birthday, when a cold-like virus sparked a fever. Additional mild bugs triggered several more but Hayden always rapidly bounced back — until the night in November 2022 when he died.
Other recent studies, at NYU and by a team at Boston Children’s Hospital, have hunted genetic links to SUDC — finding that some children harbored mutations in genes associated with heart or brain disorders, including irregular heartbeats and epilepsy.
Heart problems, including those mutations, couldn’t explain the deaths of the toddlers in the video study, Devinsky said. He cautioned that far more research is needed but said epilepsy patients sometimes experience difficulty breathing after a seizure that can lead to death — and raised the prospect that maybe some SIDS deaths could have seizure links, too.
Hayden’s mom, Katie Czajkowski-Fell, hopes the video evidence helps finally lead to answers.
“His life, it was too precious and too important for us to not try and do something with this tragedy.”
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Americans consume foods every day that are marketed as “healthy,” when they could be quietly destroying their health, one doctor warns.
Dr. Mark Hyman, physician and co-founder of Function Health in California, says that much of America’s daily diet is filled with unhealthy ingredients.
“The amount of refined starches and sugars that are everywhere is just staggering to me, given what we know about how harmful they are,” he shared in an interview with Fox News Digital. “I don’t think people really understand.”
Hyman, author of the new book “Food Fix Uncensored,” said he’s “astounded” by what people are eating, especially for breakfast.
“People just eat sugar for breakfast,” he said. “They have muffins, they have bagels, they have croissants, they have sugar-sweetened coffees and teas.”
Dr. Mark Hyman is the author of the new book “Food Fix Uncensored.” (Function Health; Little, Brown Spark)
In addition to the traditionally sweet options for breakfast, some cereal brands and breakfast staples have adopted new “protein-packed” menu items and products, following health trends that encourage eating more protein.
“Highly processed food is not food.”
“Now, we’re seeing this halo of protein in certain things,” Hyman said, mentioning that many protein smoothies are “full of sugar.”
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The doctor also noted that some popular cereals are now marketed as having protein in them. “My joke is, if it has a health claim on the label, it’s definitely bad for you,” he said.
Instead of starting the day with a “quick fix” or processed food, Hyman suggests choosing whole sources of protein and fat for breakfast, adding that “if there’s a little carbohydrate in there, it’s fine.”
More products marketed as “high protein” have cropped up on supermarket shelves. (iStock)
For his own breakfast, Hyman said he has a protein shake with whey protein, avocado and frozen berries. Eggs and avocados are also a great protein-and-fat combo option, he added.
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“It’s not that complicated — people need to just think about their breakfast not being dessert,” he said. “No wonder we’re in this cycle of obesity and diabetes. One in three teenage kids now has type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes. That’s just criminal.”
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Instead of counting calories and being in a caloric deficit as a way to lose weight and stay healthy, Hyman instead suggests focusing on how certain foods make you feel and how they impact your health.
“When you look at the way in which different types of calories affect your biology, you can just choose what you’re eating, and then you don’t have to worry about how much,” he told Fox News Digital.
In addition to the traditionally sweet options for breakfast, some cereal brands and breakfast staples have adopted new “protein-packed” menu items and products. (iStock)
“For example, if you eat a diet that doesn’t cause your insulin to spike — which is low in starch and sugar, higher in protein and fat — you won’t develop those swings in blood sugar, you won’t develop the spikes in insulin, you won’t deposit hungry fat … You will break that cycle.”
People are more likely to “self-regulate when they eat real food” instead of processed foods, which “bypasses the normal mechanisms of satiety, fullness and brain chemistry,” according to Hyman.
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“Ultraprocessed food and junk food or highly processed food is not food,” he said. “It doesn’t support the health and well-being of an organism. It doesn’t do that. It does the opposite.”
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Small fragments of plastic were found in the tumors of most prostate cancer patients, according to a new study from NYU Langone Health.
In past studies, microplastics have been found in almost every human organ and in bodily fluids, but their impact on human health still isn’t fully understood.
The researchers analyzed tissue samples from 10 patients with prostate cancer who underwent surgery to remove the entire organ.
Using visuals of both benign samples and tumor samples, as well as specialized equipment, the scientists identified plastic particles in 90% of the tumor samples and 70% of benign tissue samples, according to the study press release.
In past studies, microplastics were found in almost every single human organ along with bodily fluids, even the placenta. (iStock)
The cancerous tissue contained on average more than double the amount of plastic as healthy prostate tissue samples, the study found. This equates to about 40 micrograms of plastic per gram of tissue compared to 16 micrograms.
Researchers avoided contaminating the samples with other plastics by substituting standard tools with those made of aluminum, cotton and other non-plastic material, the release noted.
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The scientists say this is the first direct evidence linking microplastics to prostate cancer.
“By uncovering yet another potential health concern posed by plastic, our findings highlight the need for stricter regulatory measures to limit the public’s exposure to these substances, which are everywhere in the environment,” said senior study author Vittorio Albergamo, assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in the release.
Using visuals of both benign samples and tumor samples, as well as specialized equipment, the scientists identified plastic particles in 90% of the tumor samples and 70% of benign tissue samples. (iStock)
The study findings were presented during the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco on Feb. 26.
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“What is most striking is not that microplastics were detected, but that they were found embedded within tumor tissue itself,” Dr. David Sidransky, oncologist and medical advisor at SpotitEarly, a startup that offers an at-home breath-based test to detect early-stage cancer, told Fox News Digital.
“While complete avoidance is unrealistic, people can take practical steps to reduce exposure.”
“We already know microplastics are present in water, air, blood and even placental tissue. Their detection in prostate tumors suggests systemic distribution and long-term bioaccumulation,” added Maryland-based Sidransky, who was not involved in the study.
Study limitations
Albergamo cautioned that a larger sample is needed to confirm the findings. Additionally, Sidransky noted that the presence of microplastics alone does not prove they cause cancer.
“Tumors can act as ‘biologic sinks,’ meaning they may accumulate circulating particles simply because of altered vasculature and permeability,” he said.
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A key unanswered question, according to the doctor, is whether microplastics are biologically active in ways that “promote DNA damage, immune modulation or chronic inflammation within the prostate.”
About one in eight men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The most actionable step men can take is appropriate screening and early detection, according to doctors. (iStock)
For those concerned about microplastics, Sidransky offered some insights.
“I believe the appropriate response is curiosity, not panic, and a commitment to understand more,” he said.
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“While complete avoidance is unrealistic, people can take practical steps to reduce exposure, such as minimizing heating food in plastic containers, reducing bottled water consumption when possible, and favoring glass or stainless steel alternatives.”
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The most actionable step men can take, however, is getting appropriate screenings to help ensure early detection, according to the doctor. Screening discussions should be individualized based on age, family history and other risk factors.
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