KEY POINTS:
Women who smoke during pregnancy are four times more likely than non-smokers to see their child fall victim to cot death, new research suggests.
The study by Bristol University's Institute of Child Life and Health nine out of 10 mothers whose babies died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Sids) had smoked during pregnancy.
Plunket national nursing clinical adviser Brenda Hynes said the study was not surprising because it supported the advice Plunket had been giving families to be smoke free while pregnant and around their home and car.
"This research confirms what we have probably known for a while about the link between smoking and pregnancy and Sids."
The number of children dying of Sids each year in New Zealand had been dropping, which was attributed to advice given to parents about sleeping their children on their backs, Ms Hynes said.
"But we still do have children who are dying of Sids and so this [study] is again contributing ... to information of what can cause Sids and therefore what we can do to prevent it."
Plunket also advised smokers not to sleep with their babies for the first six months, parents to let no one smoke near a baby or pregnant mother, and for mothers not to smoke while breast feeding.
The study, co-authored by professor of infant health and developmental physiology Peter Fleming and senior research fellow Dr Peter Blair, is based on analysis of the evidence of 21 international studies on smoking and cot death.
It will be published this week in the medical journal Early Human Development.
British newspaper the Independent on Sunday, which published part of the study today, said it was thought that the rise in the proportion of Sids mothers who smoked was at least partly a result of advice given to parents since the early 1990s about sleeping babies on their backs.
With this factor taken out of the equation, one of the main dangers which remained was exposure to smoke, the report said.
This study follows a study by American scientist Hannah Kinney, released last year, which found babies who died from cot death had an abnormality in the part of the brain which controls breathing, arousal and other reflexes.
The New Zealand Health Ministry chief adviser in child and youth health Pat Tuohy said at the time the part of the brain Dr Kinney identified was particularly susceptible to effects from nicotine, which indicated a link to smoking.
"I can see a pattern emerging that something happens during pregnancy that damages the babies' ability to respond to those sort of difficult situations when they're asleep.
"It is quite possible that one of the underlying causes of this is smoking during pregnancy."
Latest ministry figures showed 45 babies died from Sids in New Zealand in 2004, six fewer than the previous year.
To prevent Sids the ministry advises that a baby should be put to sleep on its back, a mother should not smoke during pregnancy, and parents should not sleep with their children or smoke around them.
- NZPA
