Bed Sharing with Parents Leads to Increased Risk of Cot Death for Babies

A new study led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine claims that breast-fed babies who sleep on the same bed as their parents face a fivefold increase in the risk of cot death, even if the parents do not smoke.

Cot death, also known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), is one of the major causes of death among babies under the age of 1, especially in high-income countries. There is an existing consensus that sleeping with the baby elevates the risk of cot death if the parents smoke or if the mother has been consuming alcohol or taking drugs. But it was not clear whether bed-sharing in general causes the risk of cot death, even if parents never smoked or consumed alcohol or drugs.

The study was the one of the largest of its kind. To prove their finding, researchers examined the individual records of nearly 1,472 cot death cases and had a control case of 4,679 across five studies.

Researchers noticed that the risk of cot death was more in breast-fed babies under the age of 3 months who shared the bed with their parents, even if the parents didn't smoke and the mother never consumed alcohol or drugs.

Based on this, the researchers estimated that nearly 81 percent of cot deaths among infants below 3 months with no risk factors could have been prevented had they not shared the bed with their parents. It was also found that the risk of bed-sharing drops as the infant gets older. The peak period for the occurrence of cot death was between 7-10 weeks.

"If parents were made aware of the risks of sleeping with their baby, and room sharing was instead promoted in the same way that the 'Back to Sleep' campaign was promoted 20 years ago to advise parents to place their newborn infants to sleep on their backs, we could achieve a substantial reduction in cot death rates in the UK. This advice could save the lives of up to 40% of those. Health professionals need to make a definite stand against all bed sharing, especially for babies under 3 months," said professor Bob Carpenter from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, lead author of the study.

The U.S. and the Netherlands are among a few countries that advise parents against sharing a bed with their baby in the first three months after birth.

The study was published in the journal BMJ Open.