Close to 700 factory workers in Dongguan have died in their sleep over the last ten years, and authorities have named SUNDS as the cause.

Production line workers comprise 90 percent of the victims and 93 percent of the deaths were males between the ages of 21 to 40, says the Epidemiological Study of SUNDS or Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome.

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Superstitions in Southeast Asia originally touted SUNDS to be the result of nightmares, but in later years experts pinpointed the syndrome as caused by a mutation in a human gene called the SCN5A.

Symptoms often manifest themselves in previously healthy individuals, where death occurs 3 to 4 hours after falling asleep.

Witness accounts often describe victims to be choking, gasping, and even foaming at the mouth. These symptoms are then followed by erratic heart fibrillations that eventually cause death.

Data from surveys conducted by researchers in Zhongshan School of Medicines at Sun Yat-sen University show that from January 1990 to August 2013, there had been around 1,124 cases of SUNDS reported in Dongguan, a major manufacturing area in Guangdong. The studies also showed that over the past decade a total of 697 deaths have been recorded.

Data shows that between 2001 to 2006 alone, a total of 975 deaths caused by SUNDS in China were concentrated in the Guangdong province with 909 victims identified as male while only 66 were female.

According to the surveys, one out of every 100,000 production line employees is affected by the syndrome each year.

The majority of the SUNDS victims were manual-laborers with poor education, coming from different provinces in China to seek employment in the manufacturing industries.

Most victims work overtime at construction sites, manufacturing companies, and other industries that require heavy labor for low compensation.

Due to this, Zhang Yiri, an associate professor from Guangzhou City Polytechnic, recognized unjust payment as a factor for why laborers have to work overtime. This, in turn, causes the high rate of SUNDS victims in the region.

One migrant worker in Zhongshan attested to the fact that if he refuses to work overtime, he wouldn't be able to earn enough due to basic salaries for laborers like him being too low.

Other researchers added that the government should look into the betterment of working and living conditions for such workers and for minimum wages to be raised in order to prevent future SUNDS cases.

TagsSUNDS china, SUNDS, sleep syndrom china