BED SHARING WITH SIBLINGS AND SOFT BEDDING INCREASE SIDS RISK
Infants who share a bed with other children are at a higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) than are other infants, according to a study of 260 predominantly African American SIDS deaths in the Chicago area.
The researchers, lead by Dr. Fern Hauck, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Virginia Health System, found that two known risk factors for SIDS – sleeping on soft bedding and sleeping on the stomach – pose a far greater risk of SIDS when they occur together. Also, the results show that infants put to bed with a pacifier had a lower SIDS risk, confirming several international studies done on the subject. The study appears in the May edition of Pediatrics.
“These findings highlight the need to eliminate soft bedding, infant stomach sleeping and infant bed sharing with other children and on couches,” said Dr. Fern R. Hauck, associate professor of family medicine at the U.Va. Health System and principal investigator of the study. “Also, using pacifiers could potentially reduce deaths from SIDS even further.”
Infants who died of SIDS were 5.4 times more likely to have shared a bed with other children than were the control infants. The study concluded that the risk of bed sharing was primarily associated with the infant sleeping with people other than the parents. However, sleeping with the mother alone did not reduce the risk of SIDS, as some authors have concluded.
The researchers noted that sleeping on the stomach, and sleeping on soft bedding, both known to increase the risk of SIDS independently, posed a much greater risk for SIDS when occurring together than might be expected. For example, soft bedding appeared to pose five times the risk of SIDS as firm bedding. Sleeping on the stomach increased the risk of SIDS 2.4 times. Yet infants who slept stomach down on soft bedding had 21 times the risk of SIDS as infants who slept on the back on firm bedding.
Of the SIDS cases, 15 were found to have slept on a sofa the last time they were placed to sleep. The researches do not know why sleeping on a sofa would increase the risk of SIDS more than would sleeping on a bed, yet warn that the practice appears to be highly dangerous.
The study authors suggested that physicians counsel new parents not only about the benefits of placing infants to sleep on their backs, but also about the risk their study had uncovered. To reduce the racial disparity in SIDS rates, the authors advised taking families’ economic circumstances into consideration. For example, some parents may not be able to afford firmer mattresses or to have enough beds for all their family members. The authors called for research on how best to meet these needs.
The researchers compared information about each SIDS case to information about a control infant – a living infant of comparable age, who was from the same racial and or ethnic group, and who had a similar birth weight. All of the SIDS deaths were evaluated by the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office. Autopsies had been conducted to rule out other causes of death. Death scene investigators conducted interviews about circumstances surrounding the deaths.
May 5, 2003 | 