Smoking Out the Rates of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death :

We know smoking during pregnancy is bad for a mother’s and future infant’s health. What is the relationship between smoking just before or during pregnancy and the risk of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID)?  This is the question addressed by Anderson et al. (10.1542/peds.2018-3325)  The authors looked at a Centers for Disease Control dataset involving linkage of 20,685,463 births to 19,127 sudden unexpected infant deaths.  The SUID risk more than doubled in women who smoked even one cigarette during the pregnancy compared to those mothers who did not smoke.  Furthermore when a mother smoked anywhere from 1 to 20 cigarettes a day, the risk of SUID increased linearly, although this increase plateaued after 20 cigarettes.  The good news is that if a mother quit or reduced her smoking frequency during pregnancy, the odds of their baby experiencing SUID decreased compared to those women who kept smoking.  Based on this, 22% of SUIDs in the US is due to maternal smoking.  What’s the take-away from this important study? Don’t smoke if you are even thinking of becoming pregnant and if you want to reduce your future child’s chances of not experiencing SUID.  There are far more data and interesting findings to smoke out by reading this study, so link to it and learn more.