CHECKUP : NEWS, TIPS AND TRENDS GROUP REVISES SUGGESTIONS FOR PREVENTION OF SIDS.

The nation's largest pediatrician group announced last week at its annual meeting that it has slightly modified its recommendations for preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

In light of recent study findings, the American Academy of Pediatrics now states that the preferable sleeping position for babies is on their backs, but that placing them on their sides is ``a reasonable alternative.''

In April 1992, the AAP recommended that babies be placed on their backs or sides, rather than on their stomachs - the prone position. In 1992, an estimated one baby in 850 died from SIDS. The latest figures show that the rate has decreased to one in 1,500 infants, a 30 percent decrease.

Recent reports from England and New Zealand indicate that the risk of SIDS is slightly greater for infants placed on their sides when compared to infants placed on their backs. Evidence suggests that the reason for this difference is that infants placed on their sides may be more likely to turn to a prone position spontaneously.

Researchers do not know for sure what causes SIDS, but one theory is that babies re-breathe their own air, causing carbon dioxide to build up in a baby's blood, Kattwinkel said. This might occur, for example, if a pocket forms in a soft surface and the baby breathes into it, a situation equivalent to the baby breathing into a plastic bag, he said.

Researchers suspect that SIDS results from an inability of the baby to arouse and get out of such situations.

Shut down ovaries, shut down cancer: Stopping the normal function of the ovaries may halt the development of early breast cancer, researchers report.

Researchers from the Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group performed a statistical analysis of the findings of 12 clinical trials that evaluated the usefulness of induced ovary shutdown, or ablation, in stopping early breast cancer in premenopausal women.

The researchers found that for every 100 women with early breast cancer who underwent ablation, an extra six would be alive 15 years later, compared with women who did not undergo the same treatment, the researchers reported last week in the international medical journal the Lancet.