Explaining why SIDS Recurs
Reported December 16, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — A new study out of Great Britain explains why mothers who have had one baby die of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are more likely to have another infant suffer the same fate.
Researchers analyzed data from more than 258,000 women who gave birth to more than one infant in Scotland over a six-year period. The results reveal women who have SIDS babies are more likely to have complicated pregnancy, which put subsequent infants at risk as well.
Overall, women who had an infant die of SIDS were about two-to-three times more likely to have babies who were smaller at birth and two-to-three times more likely to deliver early. Women who experienced these complications had about twice the risk of losing a subsequent baby to SIDS.
The results held true even after researchers adjusted their findings to take other factors known to influence SIDS risk into account, such as age of the mother and the mother’s smoking and marital status.
“We speculate that the association between SIDS in one pregnancy and obstetric complications in other pregnancies partly explains the tendency for SIDS events to recur,” study authors say.
Study researchers also note SIDS is the most common cause of infant mortality in developed nations.
SOURCE: The Lancet, 2005;366:2107-2111
