[Type of newborn infant feeding and an epidemiological approach to SIDS]

There are many etiopathogenetic theories that hypothesize several causes or factors supporting the onset of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Among the SIDS factors there are bacterial endotoxins which can be conveyed into the organism in large amounts, by contaminated milk. An epidemiologic research was carried out on a sample of 258 mothers of children and boys attending some schools of L'Aquila district in 1988. It supplied data on the nursing procedures and about diseases with unknown aetiology related to nursing periods. The results obtained refer to the years 1974-84: 33.6% of sample was normal breast-fed infants. We found increasing percentage values referred to bottle-fed infants the first month of life (45% of sample in 1984); 22.5% of sample was bottle-fed infants only. Cows' milk was less and less used and it reached the 5% value in 1984. A case of hypothetic near-SIDS (0.4%) was found and another case which can be defined at SIDS-risk. It concerns two bottle-fed infants whose milk was diluted with simple drinking water. In addition a case of SIDS in a family was found: she was a girl aged 23 weeks who had begun drinking neat cows' milk only twenty days before the disease.