Sudden infant death syndrome in asian and caucasian infants

Abstract

The incidence of SIDS in South Australia 1980-1988 was 1.9 per 1,000 for infants born to Caucasian mothers, 3.6 per 1,000 for infants born o Australian Aboriginal mothers, and 0.5 per 1,000 for infants born to Asian mothers. A low incidence in Asian infants has also been reported in Hong Kong and Malaysia, in Chinese infants in California and Japanese infants in Hawaii. The families of all infants who died of SIDS in Adelaide have been visited personally for the past 15 years, and the sleeping environment of over 400 SIDS infants observed, including that of the five Asian or part-Asian infants who died. Visits have been made to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and China to interview paediatricians and parents of infants to gain obstetric data and information about infant care practices. In China differences in parity, maternal age, survival of very low birth weight infants, maternal smoking and breast feeding may all be relevant to the incidence of SIDS. The relevance of the following factors found to be more common for Asian than Caucasian infants will be discussed - a period of confinement of mother and infant for 30 or 50 days, sleeping in the same room as an adult, supine sleeping, quilted clothing and swaddling rather than bed clothes used for warmth, restriction of movement of infants, smaller containers for sleeping infants, and shorter intervals between night feeds.