Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Aug 8, 2016; 5(3): 330-342
Published online Aug 8, 2016. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v5.i3.330
Hypothesis on supine sleep, sudden infant death syndrome reduction and association with increasing autism incidence
Nils J Bergman
Nils J Bergman, School of Child and Adolescent Health, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa
Author contributions: Bergman NJ was the sole author of this work.
Institutional review board statement: Not applicable.
Informed consent statement: Not applicable.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Author has no financial relationships or other conflict of interest relevant to this article to disclose.
Data sharing statement: No additional data available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Nils J Bergman, MB ChB, MPH, MD, School of Child and Adolescent Health, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa. nils@ninobirth.org
Telephone: +27-21-5315819 Fax: +27-21-5315819
Received: April 1, 2016
Peer-review started: April 6, 2016
First decision: May 17, 2016
Revised: May 26, 2016
Accepted: June 1, 2016
Article in press: June 3, 2016
Published online: August 8, 2016
Processing time: 127 Days and 22.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: An earlier article presents evidence that supine sleep is a stressor, with sympathetic arousal that protects infants with defects in auto-resuscitation from sudden infant death syndrome. This article argues that a possible side-effect in the population being subjected to supine sleep is an increase in the expression of features contributing to diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. In a literature search, five countries were identified (Denmark, United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, United States) with published time trends of autism, and with change-points coinciding with supine sleep campaigns. The stressor hypothesis for both conditions are amenable to testing, a better understanding of both is likely to improve outcomes.