Infant sleep deaths spike in U.S., study finds

A new study found that U.S. infant mortality rates overall are dropping, but that rates of sudden unexpected infant death may have increased in recent years (Source: “A Troubling Spike in Sleep-Related Infant Deaths,” New York Times, Jan. 27).
 
Rates of sudden unexpected infant death in the United States increased by nearly 12% from 2020 to 2022, according to new research published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
 
Though the study offered some good news — overall infant mortality rates dropped by 24% from 1999 to 2022 — it also raised questions about why more babies appear to be dying during sleep, and why rates of sleep-related death remain notably higher among Black, Native American and Pacific Islander babies than among white and Asian infants.
 
The new study looked at rates of sudden unexpected infant death, or SUID, which is a broad term that encompasses all deaths in the sleep environment. That category includes cases of death by sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS — the puzzling syndrome in which a child under one year old dies with no clear medical or environmental cause — as well as by other causes, including accidental suffocation.
 
Some of the factors that can put sleeping infants at risk are beyond parents’ control, such as a baby’s premature birth or illness. But other risks are potentially preventable, for example by limiting exposure to nicotine during pregnancy and after, by breastfeeding (which is believed to offer some protection against SIDS) and by giving babies a safe sleep environment.
 
Rates of sleep-related infant deaths plummeted in the 1990s — thanks to a national education campaign encouraging parents and caregivers to put babies to sleep on their backs instead of their stomachs — but have stagnated since.