Cases of babies dying from Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome (SIDS) have fallen dramatically over 20
years but deaths while sleeping with a parent on a sofa
have risen 400 percent researchers said.
The findings by doctors at the
Royal Hospital for Children in Bristol, England show that
campaigns to inform parents about SIDS, or cot deaths,
have had an impact.
But Professor Peter Fleming, who headed the research
team, said parents need to be aware of the danger of falling
asleep with a baby on a sofa.
"The numbers of deaths of babies in bed with their mothers
has gone down by 50 percent but the number of deaths on
a sofa with a parent has gone up by 400 percent, a four-fold
increase," Fleming said in an interview.
"Some of the mothers had not appreciated how hazardous
sleeping on a sofa with their baby was," he added.
The reasons why it is so dangerous are unclear.
Although the findings are based on British data, Fleming
said the results reported online by The Lancet medical
journal would probably be representative of most developed
countries.
SIDS, in which babies die inexplicably in their sleep,
is the leading cause of death in children under a year
old. Its cause is unknown but lying the infant face-down,
parental smoking and old mattresses which may harbor bacteria
have been cited as possible causes.
Fleming and his team studied data on 369 SIDS deaths
between 1984 and 2003 in southern England and compared
them with information on 1,300 other babies.
In addition to the rise in SIDS cases on sofas, they
also uncovered a huge increase in the proportion of cot
deaths in deprived families.
Although the number of SIDS deaths in poor families had
dropped during the course of the study, it had not fallen
as quickly as in other groups.
Women in poorer socio-economic groups were also more
likely to smoke. Eighty-six percent of babies in the study
who died in the last 5 years had mothers who smoked, according
to Fleming.
"Smoking contributes both directly and by virtue of its
association with poverty," he said.
Fleming added that the prevention message to reduce cot
deaths should be targeted at the most economically deprived
groups.
"Of the deaths that are still happening, at least three-quarters
are potentially preventable with the knowledge we have,"
he said.
