Study: Mom's drinking tied to infant deaths

About one in six sudden infant deaths may be linked to their mothers' heavy alcohol use during or soon after pregnancy, an Australian study finds.

Those deaths may result from babies being exposed to alcohol in the womb and from alcohol-using mothers creating hazardous environments for the babies after birth, the researchers said.

About 4,500 infant deaths fall into this category every year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Previously, researchers have tied SIDS to parents' smoking and to unsafe environments, but few studies have looked at whether alcohol could be involved in some of the deaths.

Researchers led by Colleen O'Leary from Curtin University in Perth examined information on 77,895 women who gave birth between 1983 and 2005. Their report appears in the journal Pediatrics.

Overall, 171 SIDS cases occurred during that time in children born to the 21,841 women who were diagnosed as heavy drinkers. Among the children who were born to 56,054 mothers without a diagnosis, there were 132 SIDS cases.

The researchers found that babies born to mothers who drank heavily during pregnancy had a sevenfold increase in the risk of SIDS, compared with children of mothers without a drinking problem. Babies also had a ninefold increased risk of SIDS when their mothers drank within the year after birth, compared with babies born to mothers who didn't drink.

"Parents should be very careful about drinking alcohol, especially if you're a single parent because there is no other parent to back you up," said David Phillips, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied alcohol-related infant deaths but wasn't involved in the new research. -- Reuters