By Joene Hendry

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Preventing bedclothes from covering the face or head of a sleeping infant may decrease the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, commonly referred to as SIDS, researchers report.

Placing an infant's feet at the foot of the cot, tucking in blankets, or using an infant sleeping bag are some ways to reduce the risk of head covering during sleep, advises Dr. Peter S. Blair from the University of Bristol, South Bristol, United Kingdom.

"Avoiding heading covering is good infant care practice," Blair told Reuters Health.

He and colleagues reviewed findings from 10 studies that assessed the prevalence of head covering among 1,234 infants who died from SIDS and another 3,822 infants of a similar age who did not die during sleep.

The combined findings of these studies indicate about 25 percent of SIDS victims are found with bedclothes covering their head or face. By contrast, about 3 percent of surviving infants included as a "control" group were similarly found, Blair and colleagues report in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The researchers assessed the frequency of head covering among the entire study population and found it to be a fairly infrequent event, noted Blair.

However, all of the studies reported head covering as a significant SIDS risk factor for SIDS. SIDS prevention campaigns encourage parents to place their infants on their backs for sleeping. But related advice for parents to avoid infant head covering "seems to have had far less impact," the researchers suggest.

While these findings do not suggest head covering causes SIDS, the findings do suggest that preventing bedclothes from covering an infants head and face during sleep "is a major modifiable risk factor associated with SIDS deaths."

"Parental advice to avoid this situation should be emphasized," Blair and colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Archives of Disease in Childhood, September 2008.

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