A new study found that U.S. infant mortality rates overall are dropping, but that rates of sudden unexpected infant death may have increased in recent years.
Rates of sudden unexpected infant death in the United States increased by nearly 12 percent from 2020 to 2022, according to new research published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Though the study offered some good news — overall infant mortality rates dropped by 24 percent from 1999 to 2022 — it also raised questions about why more babies appear to be dying during sleep, and why rates of sleep-related death remain notably higher among Black, Native American and Pacific Islander babies than among white and Asian infants.
Dr. Elizabeth Wolf, an associate professor of pediatrics with Children’s Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University who was among the new study’s authors, called the findings “pretty alarming.”
“The death of an infant from SIDS or SUID is unbelievably horrific,” Dr. Wolf continued, using two acronyms that describe sleep-related deaths among infants. “And we as a public health community need to do everything we can to try and reduce the risk factors as much as possible.”
Understanding SUID
The terminology used to describe the circumstances around an infant death in the sleep environment can be difficult for parents to parse, Dr. Wolf said.
The new study looked at rates of sudden unexpected infant death, or SUID, which is a broad term that encompasses all deaths in the sleep environment. That category includes cases of death by sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS — the puzzling syndrome in which a child under 1 dies with no clear medical or environmental cause — as well as by other causes, including accidental suffocation.