Bed sharing and the sudden infant death syndrome.

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.