Also known as SIDS, it is the leading cause of death in U.S. babies from age twenty-eight days through their first birthday.
There has been a lot of success with the campaign to get parents to put babies to sleep on their back.
Now there's another possible way to reduce the risk.
A report in the medical journal BMJ finds a connection between SIDS and babies sleeping in the same bed as their parents.
Sharing a bed with a baby three months or younger increased the risk of SIDS fivefold.
And that risk climbed much higher if one or both parents smoked -- or if the mother used alcohol or illicit drugs.
The authors say it's okay for parents to take infants into their beds for feeding and comforting.
But the child should then be placed face up in his or her own bed before the parents fall asleep.
