© 1980 Oxford University Press
research-article |
Risk of Sudden Infant-Death Syndrome by Area of Residence in the United States
1Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington Seattle, Washington, 98195, USA
Spiers P S [Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195, USA]. Risk of Sudden Infant-Death Syndrome by area of residence in the United States. International Journal of Epidemiology 1980, 9: 4548.
Due to the use of different diagnostic criteria the identification of specific risk factors for the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome will be difficult, and the evidence for any such risk factors is likely to be equivocal. This seems to be the present situation with regards to area of residence, and for this reason the relevant literature was re-examined. The results of 3 studies support the conclusion that risk to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome increases from East to West in the United States. The most reliable of these 3 studies indicated the risk in the Pacific Region to be more than double that in the Atlantic Region. Known confounding variables were not found to account for the differences observed.
Received 15 October 1979