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MONDAY, Oct. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Just keeping the air moving around a bedroom seems to dramatically reduce a baby's risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), new research suggests.
"What we found in this study is that if an infant had a fan that was used in the sleeping room, the infant's risk of SIDS was reduced by 72 percent compared to no fan in the room," said study senior author Dr. De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist in the division of research at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif. The report appears in the October issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
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Although the rate of SIDS has declined significantly in recent years -- from 1.2 per 1,000 births in 1992 to 0.53 per 1,000 births in 2003 -- SIDS is still a leading killer of infants.
Li said the prevailing theory is that SIDS occurs because an infant re-breathes carbon dioxide and doesn't have either the strength to move from harm's way or a properly developed neurological system to warn of the impending danger. "For whatever reason, carbon dioxide is trapped in the airway," he said.
And the exact reason that happens is still unknown.
"In my opinion, I don't think it's always just one thing. I think multiple factors come into play. There's probably some underlying genetic risk that, along with something in the environment, triggers a whole cascade of events," said Dr. Raymond Pitetti, associate director of emergency medicine at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Scientists have identified certain risk factors that increase the risk of SIDS, such as sleeping on the stomach or sleeping on soft bedding. Li and his colleagues recently discovered another factor that can decrease the risk of SIDS, and that's putting baby to bed with a pacifier.
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