Mystery as hundreds of young Chinese workers are dying in their sleep
The number of young male workers with no history of health problems who died suddenly in their sleep has risen sharply over the past decade in the manufacturing hub Dongguan, research shows.
The number of young male workers with no history of health problems who died suddenly in their sleep has risen sharply over the past decade in the manufacturing hub Dongguan, research shows.
The city's police recorded 893 cases of sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome from January 2001 to October last year.
It is a more than triple the 231 cases recorded from January 1990 to December 1999.
The sharp increase came to light after researchers at Zhongshan School of Medicine based in Guangzhou released their analysis of police records of deaths in Dongguan over the past two decades, the official reported.
The syndrome covers the deaths in their sleep of otherwise healthy adults with autopsies revealing no potentially fatal disease or injury. The men who died usually experienced an abrupt difficulty in breathing before death, the school's studies into the syndrome said, but the cause remained unclear.
The syndrome is mostly noted in the Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.
The newspaper reported that it first drew the attention of mainland medical scholars when an increasing number of migrant workers in Dongguan were reported to have died suddenly in their sleep in the 1990s.
