The women who smoke regularly should avoid smoking during pregnancy. Smoking can put their new born babies at higher risk of SIDS as shown by the recent Canadian research. Cot death or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is the leading cause of death among infants who are 1 month to 1 year old.

The recent study has shown that smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of SIDS in infants. Team of researchers led by Dr. Shabih Hasan, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Calgary, studied the effect of pre-natal smoking on infants. Researchers found out that premature babies of smoking mothers are at greater risk of SIDS as compared to premature babies born to non smoking mothers.

Researchers studied data collected from 22 infants born prematurely between 28 and 32 weeks of gestation. Mothers of 10 babies didn’t smoke during pregnancy while mothers of 12 babies smoked five or more cigarettes daily during their pregnancy.

Researchers collected data related to various factors like breathing rate of the infants, interruptions in breathing, breathing recovery time, oxygen saturation in the blood, and heart rate, in assessing impact of smoking on their respiration. Then medical data of infants born prematurely to smoking mothers and non-smoking mothers was compared.

The study showed that during decreased oxygen supply, babies born to smoking mothers showed increase in heart rate. However babies born to non-smoking mothers showed no such change. This means babies born to smoking mothers were stressed when oxygen was low. Babies born to nonsmoking mothers recovered quickly as compared to infants born to women who smoked during pregnancy.

However there was no difference in the respiratory rates and the number of breathing pauses in these infants.

Dr. Shabih Hasan said that inability or delayed recovery from repeated low oxygen episodes can also be detrimental to brain development. Hasan added that there is increasing evidence that infants exposed to prenatal cigarette smoke are at high risk for developmental and behavioral disorders.