INFANT ROOM-SHARING AND PRONE SLEEP POSITION IN SUDDEN-INFANT-DEATH-SYNDROME

Background There is evidence that the risk of sudden infant death synd rome is lower among ethnic groups in which parents generally share a r oom with the infant for sleeping. We investigated whether the presence of other family members in the infant's sleeping room affects the ris k of the sudden infant death syndrome. Methods The case-control study covered a region with 78% of all births in New Zealand during 1987-90. Home interviews were completed with parents of 393 (81.0% of total) b abies who died from the sudden infant death syndrome aged 28 days to 1 year and 1592 (88.4% of total) controls, selected from all hospital b irths in the study region. Findings The relative risk of sudden infant death for sharing the room with one or more adults compared with not sharing was 0.19 (95% Cl 0.08-0.45) for sharing at night during the la st 2 weeks and 0.27 (0.17-0.41) for sharing in the last sleep, after c ontrol for other confounders. Sharing the room with one or more childr en did not affect the relative risk (1.25 [0.86-1.82] for sharing duri ng last 2 weeks; 1.29 [0.85-1.94] for sharing in last sleep). There wa s a significant interaction (p=0.033) between not sharing the room wit h an adult and prone sleep position in the last sleep. Compared with i nfants sharing the room with an adult and not prone, the multivariate relative risk was 16.99 (10.43-27.69) for infants not sharing with an adult and prone, 3.28 (2.06-5.23) for infants sharing the room and pro ne, and 2.60 (1.58-4.30) for infants not sharing the room and not pron e. The interaction between adult room-sharing and prone sleep position suggests that both exposures may affect the risk of sudden infant dea th syndrome through a common mechanism. Interpretation We recommend th at infants sleep in the same bedroom as their parents at night to redu ce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.