MONDAY, Sept. 30, 2024 (HealthDay News) — The rates of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) increased during the intrapandemic period, according to a study published online Sept. 26 in JAMA Network Open.

Emma G. Guare, from the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, and colleagues compared prepandemic and intrapandemic rates of SUID and SIDS in a cross-sectional study using U.S. mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for Jan. 1, 2018, through Dec. 31, 2021.

The researchers identified 14,308 SUID cases from Jan. 1, 2018, to Dec. 31, 2021. The risk for SUID increased during the intrapandemic period compared with the prepandemic period (intensity ratio, 1.06). An increased risk for SUID was seen beyond the prepandemic baseline starting in July 2020, with a pronounced epidemiologic shift from June to December 2021 (ranging from 10 to 14 percent). Compared with the prepandemic baseline, the rates of SIDS were elevated throughout the intrapandemic period, with the greatest increases in July and August 2021 (intensity ratios, 1.18 and 1.17, respectively).

“Our observational data show an epidemiologic shift of SUID and SIDS during the pandemic where a plausible unifying hypothesis may be an infectious stimulus contributing to a proportion of cases,” the authors write. “While our assessment is merely hypothetical and meant to be hypothesis generating, if a clear infectious contributor to SIDS were identified, mitigation efforts might incorporate infection prevention strategies to protect vulnerable infants beyond the currently used safe sleep practices.”

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