Bed sharing and the sudden infant death syndrome

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether infants who died of the sudden infant death syndrome routinely shared their parents' bed more commonly than control infants.

Design: Case-control study.

Setting: Southern California.

Subjects: 200 white, African-American, Latin American, and Asian infants who died and 200 living controls, matched by birth hospital, date of birth, sex, and race.

Main outcome measures: Routine bedding (for example, crib, cradle), day and night time sleeping arrangement (for example, alone or sharing a bed); for cases only, sleeping arrangement at death. Differences in bed sharing practices among races.

Results: Of the infants who died of the syndrome, 45 (22.4%) were sharing a bed. Daytime bed sharing was more common in African-American (P < 0.001) and Latin American families (P < 0.001) than in white families. The overall adjusted odds ratio for the syndrome and routine bed sharing in the daytime was 1.38 (95% confidence interval 0.59 to 3.22) and for night was 1.21 (0.59 to 2.48). These odds ratios were adjusted for routine sleep position, passive smoking, breast feeding, intercom use, infant birth weight, medical conditions at birth, and maternal age and education. There was no interaction between bed sharing and passive smoking or alcohol use by either parent.

Conclusions: Although there was a significant difference between bed sharing among African-American and Latin American parents compared with white parents, there was no significant relation between routine bed sharing and the sudden infant death syndrome.