Bed sharing and the sudden infant death syndrome

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Abstract
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 9for 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 (PConclusions : 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.