03:56 PM ET 08/04/97

Infants best left in own bed, study says


         Release at 5 p.m. EDT
            CHICAGO (Reuter) - Parents who put their babies in bed with
them are not reducing the risk sudden infant death syndrome,
health experts said Monday.
            Sharing a bed may encourage breast feeding, but there is no
scientific proof that it protects against ``crib death,'' the
most common cause of death between the ages of one month and one
year in developed countries, they said.
            The advice was contained in a policy statement developed by
the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development. It was published in the
August issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the pediatrics
academy.
            While experts believe that sudden infant death syndrome may
have more than one cause, pediatricians recommend putting babies
to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk.
            Bed-sharing may actually increase the risk of such deaths
because adult beds are not designed to meet safety standards for
infants and may have softer surfaces that could lead to stomach
sleeping, entrapment and suffocation, the policy statement said.
            In a second study published in the journal, researchers at
the University Hospital of Bergen in Norway reported that
infants put to sleep lying on their stomachs, with their heads
covered by bedding, had higher levels of exhaled carbon dioxide
near their faces.
            They were also less likely to be able to toss the bedding
off than infants placed on their backs.
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