School of Medicine, Bond University, Gold Coast 4229, Australia.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Apr 25;17(9):2985. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17092985.
Mother-infant co-sleeping or bed sharing is discouraged by health organisations due to evidence that it is associated with unexplained sudden infant death. On the other hand, there is evidence that it should theoretically be beneficial for infants. One line of this evidence concerns breathing regulation, which at night is influenced by the rocking movement of the mother's chest as she breathes. Here, the hypothesis that mother-infant co-sleeping will be associated with a lower probability of infant breathing distress is tested in the UK Millennium Cohort Study (n = 18,552 infants). Maternal, infant, family, and socio-economic covariates were included in logistic regression analysis, and in a machine learning algorithm (Random Forest) to make full use of the number of variables available in the birth cohort study data. Results from logistic regression analysis showed that co-sleeping was associated with a reduced risk of breathing difficulties (OR = 0.69, = 0.027). The Random Forest algorithm placed high importance on socio-economic aspects of infant environment, and indicated that a number of maternal, child, and environmental variables predicted breathing distress. Co-sleeping by itself was not high in the Random Forest variable importance ranking. Together, the results suggest that co-sleeping may be associated with a modest reduction in risk of infant breathing difficulties.
母婴同睡或同床被健康组织所劝阻，因为有证据表明它与不明原因的婴儿猝死有关。另一方面，也有证据表明母婴同睡在理论上对婴儿有益。其中一个证据涉及呼吸调节，夜间婴儿的呼吸会受到母亲胸部摇晃运动的影响。在这里，研究人员在英国千禧年队列研究（n=18552 名婴儿）中检验了母婴同睡与婴儿呼吸窘迫可能性降低之间的假设。逻辑回归分析纳入了母亲、婴儿、家庭和社会经济方面的协变量，并使用机器学习算法（随机森林）充分利用出生队列研究数据中的变量数量。逻辑回归分析结果表明，母婴同睡与呼吸困难风险降低有关（OR=0.69，p=0.027）。随机森林算法非常重视婴儿环境的社会经济方面，并表明许多母亲、儿童和环境变量可以预测呼吸窘迫。母婴同睡本身在随机森林变量重要性排名中并不靠前。总的来说，这些结果表明，母婴同睡可能与婴儿呼吸困难风险适度降低有关。
