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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Feeling lonely may take a toll on older adults’ memory — but it may not speed up cognitive decline, according to a new study.
Researchers from Colombia, Spain and Sweden analyzed data from more than 10,000 adults ages 65 to 94 across 12 European countries and found those who reported higher levels of loneliness did worse on memory tests at the start of the study, according to research published this month in the journal Aging & Mental Health.
Over a seven-year period, however, memory decline occurred at a similar rate regardless of how lonely participants felt.
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“The finding that loneliness significantly impacted memory, but not the speed of decline in memory over time was a surprising outcome,” lead author Dr. Luis Carlos Venegas-Sanabria of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Universidad del Rosario said in a statement.
Loneliness may be linked to memory performance in older adults, a new study suggests. (iStock)
“It suggests that loneliness may play a more prominent role in the initial state of memory than in its progressive decline,” Venegas-Sanabria said, adding that the findings highlight the importance of addressing loneliness as a factor in cognitive performance.
The findings add to debate about whether loneliness contributes to dementia risk. While loneliness and social isolation are often considered risk factors for cognitive decline, research results have been mixed.
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The study looked at data from the long-running Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which tracked 10,217 older adults between 2012 and 2019. Participants were asked to recall words immediately and after a delay to measure memory performance.
Social isolation and loneliness could play a surprising role in cognitive health among seniors. (iStock)
Loneliness was assessed using three questions about how often participants felt isolated, left out or lacking companionship.
About 8% of participants reported high levels of loneliness at the outset. That group tended to be older, more likely to be female and more likely to have conditions such as depression.
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Researchers found that those with higher loneliness had lower scores on both immediate and delayed memory tests at baseline. Still, all groups — regardless of loneliness level — experienced similar declines in memory over time.
The results suggest loneliness may not directly accelerate the progression of memory loss, though it remains linked to poorer cognitive performance overall.
Researchers look at a brain scan at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Experts warn, however, that the findings should not be interpreted to mean loneliness is harmless.
“The finding that lonely older adults start with worse memory but don’t decline faster is actually the most interesting part of the paper, and I think it’s easy to misread,” said Jordan Weiss, Ph.D., a scientific advisor and aging expert at Assisted Living Magazine and a professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
“It likely means loneliness does its damage earlier in life, well before people show up in a study like this at 65-plus,” Weiss told Fox News Digital.
By older age, long-term social patterns may already be established, making it harder to detect when the effects of loneliness first took hold, an aging expert says. (iStock)
He suggested that by older age, long-term social patterns may already be established, making it harder to detect when the effects of loneliness first took hold.
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“By the time you’re measuring someone in their late 60s, decades of social connection patterns are already baked in,” he said.
Weiss, who was not involved in the research, added that loneliness may coincide with other health conditions, and noted that participants who felt more isolated also had higher rates of depression, high-blood pressure and diabetes. The link, he said, may reflect a cluster of health risks rather than a direct cause.
“While they can go hand-in-hand, it’s not clear that loneliness contributes to dementia,” a psychotherapist says. (iStock)
Amy Morin, a Florida-based psychotherapist and author, said the findings reflect a broader pattern in research on loneliness and brain health, and that the relationship may be more complex than it appears.
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“The evidence shows there’s a link between loneliness and cognitive decline but there’s no direct evidence of a cause and effect relationship,” she said. “So while they can go hand-in-hand, it’s not clear that loneliness contributes to dementia.”
Morin added that loneliness, which can fluctuate, may not be the root of the problem, but rather a symptom of other underlying mental or physical health issues.
Researchers suggested screening for loneliness be incorporated into routine cognitive assessments as one way to support healthy aging. (iStock)
She said staying socially and mentally engaged is crucial for overall brain health.
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“It’s important to be proactive about social activities,” Morin said. “Joining a book club, having coffee with a friend, or attending faith-based services can be a powerful way to maintain connections in older age.”
The researchers also suggested screening for loneliness be incorporated into routine cognitive assessments as one way to support healthy aging.
Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers for comment.
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Research continues to uncover new details on how fasting may help extend life.
A new study published in the journal Nature Communications investigated how intermittent fasting can boost longevity in small worms often used in aging research.
Researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas compared worms that were fed normally to those that underwent a 24-hour fast in early adulthood and were then fed again, according to a press release.
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The scientists measured a variety of factors, including stored fat, gene activity related to fat metabolism and lifespan.
The results showed that the life-boosting benefit did not depend on the fasting itself but on the body’s behavior after eating again.
Experts say sustainability is key when choosing a long-term weight-loss strategy. (iStock)
Study lead Peter Douglas, associate professor of molecular biology and a member of the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine at UT Southwestern, suggested that these discoveries “shift the focus toward a neglected side of the metabolic coin – the re-feeding phase.”
“Our data suggest that the health-promoting effects of intermittent fasting are not merely a product of the fast itself, but are dependent on how the metabolic machinery recalibrates during the subsequent transition back to a fed state,” he said.
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“Our findings bridge a gap between lipid metabolism and aging research,” he added. “By targeting aging, the single greatest risk factor for human disease, we move beyond treating isolated conditions toward a preventive model of medicine that enhances quality of life for all individuals.”
Lauri Wright, director of nutrition programs at the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health, called this a “high-quality” study that adds an “important nuance to how we think about fasting and longevity.”
Intermittent fasting typically involves limiting meals to an eight-hour daily window or fasting every other day. (iStock)
The benefits of the refeeding phase after fasting were “especially interesting,” Wright, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital.
“The researchers showed that longevity was linked to the body’s ability to turn off fat breakdown after fasting, allowing cells to restore energy balance,” she reiterated.
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“From a scientific standpoint, that’s a meaningful shift because it suggests fasting is not just about burning fat, but about metabolic flexibility.”
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Fasting may support longevity through triggering metabolic switching, enhancing cellular repair and stress resistance and improving markers like insulin sensitivity, research shows.
Limitations and cautions
Although this study provides “important insight” on the power of refeeding, Wright noted that the findings should be approached with caution, as the study was done on worms and cannot always be translated to humans.
“Additionally, it explains how a process might work in a controlled lab condition rather than real-world eating behaviors,” she added as a limitation. “Finally, the study is short-term and doesn’t give us the long-term translation on lifespan outcomes.”
The review found intermittent fasting was barely more effective than doing nothing, according to the study authors. (iStock)
Wright cautioned that fasting is “not a magic solution for longevity, and how you eat overall matters more than when you eat.”
“I advise, first and foremost, to focus on diet quality, including a variety of fruits and vegetables, healthy fats and minimally processed foods,” she said.
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For those who are considering fasting, it’s better to stick with a moderate plan — like a 12- to 14-hour overnight fast — rather than going to extremes, Wright said. After fasting, she recommends focusing on well-balanced meals.
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Several groups of people should be cautioned against fasting, according to Wright, including those with diabetes who are on insulin or hypoglycemic medications, those who are pregnant or breastfeeding, anyone with a history of eating disorders and older adults at risk of malnutrition.
Anyone considering intermittent fasting should consult with a doctor before starting.
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