Before I start dealing with new enquiries, here are some responses to questions and comments that were already received here:
Hello Upwind,
Study 1 did find risk for non-smoking mothers for infants below the age of 7-8 weeks. This is shown in Figure 1 from that paper, which shows that the lower 95% confidence interval for non-smokers is above the unity risk line below that age. This is not referred to in the abstract but the principal author, Professor Bob Carpenter, has re-analysed the data and now says that it is significant up to 16 weeks. I am now in the studio so do not have the paper in front of me but if you get hold of it you will find it is so. Bob's re-analysis is published in a less well known journal which I did not include in my paper because it is not easily available. Incidentally, he no longer supports the conclusion with which you conclude your comment (which is unfortunate, I agree)
As I wrote in my summary document, references 4 and 6 found a non-significant trend towards risk for non-smoking mothers (OR 1.3 and 1,35 respectively) but all the others were significant, especially for the younger infants. As far as I know nobody has yet conducted a formal meta-analyis of these studies but it would inevitably come out with a significant summary odds ratio.
Hello Poface,
Although I am as strong a supporter of breast feeding as anyone, it is actually an exaggeration to say that breast feeding has 'a huge effect on infant mortality' in developed countries. It has an effect but nowhere near as great as that in developing countries where infection, especially gastroenteritis, is the leading cause of infant mortality (not long ago the WHO estimated that 5 million infants die each year from this cause in the Indian subcontinent alone.
I am not aware that anyone has stated that bed sharing is always the worst option in all circumstances, and I would certainly never criticise anyone who found that it was the only way to cope, as you seem to have done. As I and others have repeatedly said, for low risk parents (especially non-smokers) the risk of bed sharing is very low, but I cannot state in view of the published evidence that it is zero.
There is research focussing (although not solely) on bed sharing safety for breast fed babies. The German study previously referred to found no interaction between breast feeding and bedsharing: the risk was increased but from a vanishingly small level to a low level.
Dear peppapighastakenoverm.
The careful meta-analysis conducted by Fern Hauck and her associates (O'Connor et al, reference somewhere above!) showed no evidence at all of a negative effect of dummy use on breast feeding exclusivity or duration in any of the four controlled trials in the published literature. The claim that there is such a (negative) association is based solely on observational studies, which by their nature cannot demonstrate causation and which inevitably (albeit unconsciously) subject to bias. The protective effect of dummy use is therefore applicable equally to breast and bottle fed infants. It is not possible to give an odds ration for the specific situation you describe because no studies have been done which addressed that question.
Dear JimmyMcNulty,
An excellent question! Research has shown that most dummies do indeed fall out within the first half hour of a sleep period but, strangely or not, the protective effect seems to remain. This reflects, I think, the fact that we really have no idea of how or why dummies are protective. Incidentally, the same is true of the most important intervention yet devised, that of sleeping babies on their backs. We really don't know why this is effective but the evidence is overwhelming that it is.
Dear ReallyTired,
Not as simple a question as it might appear. It is more common overall, but subsequent babies born in a family where one such death has occurred are at greater risk than those born in a famlly without this history.
Dear Leningrad,
No, it isn't safer to have the baby in the bed. The explanation is that more babies sleep in cots than bed share, and the risk as a total of all babies is higher for bed sharers than for babies sleeping in a separate cot in the parents' bedroom (the last part is important: more than one study has shown that the risk for babies in the first few months who sleep in a separate room is double that for those in a cot in the parents' room).