Long before Andy Wakefield scared parents with the idea that vaccines could be linked to autism, we had the myth that vaccines caused SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome.
SIDS
SIDS is the “cause assigned to infant deaths that cannot be explained after a thorough case investigation, including a scene investigation, autopsy, and review of the clinical history.”
Like other types of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID), including sleep related deaths, the incidence of SIDS decreased dramatically in the mid-1990s after the American Academy of Pediatrics introduced their safe sleep recommendations.
These recommendations have evolved over the years, which is now called Safe to Sleep, and now include advice about room sharing instead of bedsharing, the protective role of breastfeeding and getting immunized, avoiding overheating, using pacifiers, and getting regular prenatal care, etc.
Vaccines and SIDS
The fact that getting immunized is thought to have a protective role against SIDS should help folks understand that vaccines do not cause SIDS.
“There is no evidence that there is a causal relationship between immunizations and SIDS. Indeed, recent evidence suggests that vaccination may have a protective effect against SIDS.”
AAP Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
It is very easy to see why some would think they could be linked though. The highest risk of SIDS coincides with the ages of the two and four month well child checks, when infants are vaccinated. But as many of us understand, correlation does not imply causation. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean that one caused the other.
It also didn’t help that in 1999, ABC’s 20/20 did a misleading episode, “Who’s Calling the Shots?,” which claimed that the hepatitis B vaccine could cause SIDS.
But it is easy to see that they were wrong.
For one thing, even as we are giving infants more vaccines and protecting them from more diseases, fewer infants are dying of SIDS. How can that be if vaccines are linked to SIDS?
And why is the infant mortality rate in the United States continuing to go down, recently reaching a record low?
Also, many studies, such as this one, “Probability of Coincident Vaccination in the 24 or 48 Hours Preceding Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Death in Australia,” showed that coincident vaccination and SIDS can be expected to occur by chance alone. In fact, for the infants in this study, they showed that “if a child experienced an illness at the age of 8 weeks, then there is a 7% chance (or probability of 0.07) that the child would have been vaccinated in the preceding 24 hours.”
“…when a number of well-controlled studies were conducted during the 1980s, the investigators found, nearly unanimously, that the number of SIDS deaths temporally associated with DTP vaccination was within the range expected to occur by chance. In other words, the SIDS deaths would have occurred even if no vaccinations had been given.”
WHO Six Common Misconceptions About Immunization
And other studies actually showed that getting vaccinated reduced an infant’s risk of dying of SIDS.
What To Know About Vaccines and SIDS
Vaccines do not cause SIDS.
In fact, getting vaccinated is now thought to have a protective effect against SIDS!
For More Information on Vaccines and SIDS
- AAP – Reduce the Risk of SIDS & Suffocation
- CDC – Vaccines do not cause SIDS
- Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
- WHO – Six common misconceptions about immunization
- Immunization Safety Review: Vaccinations and Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy
- SIDS Not Linked to Number and Variety of Childhood Vaccines
- Infant vaccination correlates to reduced incidence of SIDS
- Vaccines and infant mortality rates: A false relationship promoted by the anti-vaccine movement
- Another antivaccination cult “peer-reviewed” paper–SIDS and vaccines
- SIDS – Fact or Fiction
- SIDS: Not caused by vaccination or ‘mattress toxin’
- Study – Do immunisations reduce the risk for SIDS? A meta-analysis.
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Your question:
“For one thing, even as we are giving infants more vaccines and protecting them from more diseases, fewer infants are dying of SIDS. How can that be if vaccines are linked to SIDS?”
My answer:
The vaccines themselves have changed: the DPT vaccine was replaced by the DTaP vaccine in the mid-1990s, and the OPV was also replaced by the IPV around the same time.
Your question:
And why is the infant mortality rate in the United States continuing to go down, recently reaching a record low?
My answer:
Post-neonatal mortality (which is the period where SIDS is observed typically) has not declined as much as neonatal mortality (first 30 days). From 2007 to 2016, the postneonatal mortality rate declined from 2.33 deaths per 1,000 births to 1.99 deaths per 1,000 births, compared to neonatal which decreased from 4.42 to 3.88 in the same period.
If we just look at SUID, according to the CDC “Since 1999, declines have slowed.” The most declines occurred in relationship to modifications such as back to sleep, removing loose bedding, encouraging room sharing, increases in breastfeeding, reductions in maternal smoking, and the switch from DTP vaccine to DTaP vaccine. As more and more doses have been given routinely to infants we do not see a continuous drop in infant mortality in the SUID category.
The combined SUID rate has actually increased since 2011 when it was 86.1 deaths per 100,000 live births to 92.9 per 100,000 live births in 2020.
So, more vaccines, or higher uptake, or higher compliance does not translate into lower infant mortality in the SUID category.
Your Statement:
“And other studies actually showed that getting vaccinated reduced an infant’s risk of dying of SIDS.”
My answer:
Those studies don’t actually show that. What it does show is a control infant, who is much healthier, is vaccinated more often.
The demographic characteristics, such as prematurity, low birth weight, sick, young single parent, etc, provides some explanation for why more of the infants who get a SIDS diagnosis are vaccinated less often. SIDS is an umbrella term, whereas some infants are on their stomachs in unsafe sleeping situations with a drinking parent, others are recently vaccinated, placed on their back on a hard sleeping surface and well-cared for. The diagnosis also occasionally captures homicide, etc.
But back to the actual studies, just because a healthy control infant survives vaccination does not mean the ‘SIDS’ infant should have. They are too different to be able to measure exposures.