FSID training fellowships 

Since 1993, FSID has made 32 awards under our training fellowship scheme, which enables researchers to undertake pilot studies to rapidly pursue new and innovative ideas in research into infant deaths.

Investigations have included brain pathology and hypoxia, neonatal metabolism, upper airway reflexes, physiological effects of co-sleeping, sleep patterns, examination of stress hormones in babies, maternal depression, apoptosis (a form of programmed cell death) in the nerve cells of babies, and several investigations into the toxic gas theory and effects of antimony.

Currently we are funding Dr Thayyil of London'd Institute of Child Health to investigate the accuracy of post-mortem magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guiding biopsy in sudden infant deaths.

Less invasive autopsy by whole body post-mortem MRI offers a promising alternative to conventional autopsy. However, MRI do not provide microbiology and histological diagnosis, which is extremely important in SUDI autopsy.

Dr Thayyil has recently developed an accurate method of MR guided percutaneous biopsy in a post-mortem piglet model. In this study, they propose to explore utility of this method for SUDI post-mortem percutaneous biopsy.

30 cases of SUDI referred to GOS hospital for HM Coronial autopsy will be included in the study, after informed parental consent. Whole body MRI will be done on a 1.5T Siemens Avanto scanner and abnormalities of individual organs if any, recorded prior to the biopsy. Following this, percutaneous MR guided biopsies will be taken from brain, lungs, heart, liver, kidney, adrenals, thyroid, pancreas and spleen. The histological and microbiological diagnosis from the percutaneous biopsy specimens will be compared to that obtained from histology blocks at invasive autopsy. If both methods have comparable yield, whole body MRI with MR guided biopsy can be offered as an alternative to invasive autopsy in SUDI.