"The pacifier may be essential for infants.  Children who use pacifiers
during sleep cut their risk of SIDS in half, new research shows.
Pacifier children strengthen the musculature in their throats and the upper
part of their trachea.
The children sleep more lightly when they use a pacifier, and the
researchers believe that children who die of SIDS, sleep deeply."

Aaaargh, I wasn't going to read any more LACTNET today and now look what you've done!

This research may yet be unpublished, but a quick look at PubMed shows more research in this area and sheds a different light on the conclusions above:

The following study mentions that pacifier users have a lower auditory threshold than non-pacifier users, meaning they are more easily aroused, and presumptively less prone to SIDS.  But it ALSO says, the way I read the statistics (someone please correct me if I am wrong), that breast-fed infants, regardless of whether they are pacifier users or not, have even lower auditory thresholds than bottle-fed infants, even if the bottle-fed infants use pacifiers:

Franco P, Scaillet S, Wermenbol V, Valente F, Groswasser J, Kahn A.
The influence of a pacifier on infants' arousals from sleep.
J Pediatr. 2000 Jun;136(6):775-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10839876&dopt=Abstract

If that is true, then a recommendation that *bottle-fed* infants use pacifiers would make sense.

On the other hand, the following review concluded, "All four research groups found an association between pacifier use and a reduced risk of sudden infant death syndrome, but they all concluded that the association does not necessarily imply that the use of a pacifier is protective against the sudden infant death syndrome. Therefore, they provide no definite recommendation for pacifier use on the grounds of protection against the sudden infant death syndrome."

There is no word in the abstract whether the researchers in any of the studies reviewed differentiated between breast and bottle-fed infants.

Zotter H, Kerbl R, Kurz R, Muller W.
Pacifier use and sudden infant death syndrome: should health professionals recommend pacifier use based on present knowledge?
Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2002 Sep 30;114(17-18):791-4. Review.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12416286&dopt=Abstract

The review appears to be an English language article in a German journal.  Any of our German LACTNETters out there have access to the full text?

OK, that's it for the day (I hope!)

Barb Strange

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