By Patricia Reaney
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 40 percent, researchers say.
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 harbour 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. The study shows that 86 percent of babies who died in the last five 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. - Reuters