SATURDAY, August 30, (News Locale) - Researchers have now come out with another reason to kick the butt during pregnancy. Women who smoke during pregnancy expose their babies - especially if they are premature - to increased risk of cot death or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), Canadian researchers suggest. 

The study involved 22 infants born prematurely between 28 and 32 weeks of gestation. Among them 12 babies' mothers smoked five or more cigarettes daily during their pregnancy. The mothers of the other 10 babies did not smoke during pregnancy.

Researchers at the University of Calgary took into consideration 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.

The researchers did not find any differences between the two groups as far as respiratory rates and the number of breathing pauses were concerned. However babies born to smoking mothers showed increases in heart rate during the time of low oxygen supply. This means babies born to smoking mothers were stressed when oxygen was low.

Babies born to non-smoking mothers did not show such stress even when oxygen was low.

"There is increasing evidence that infants exposed to prenatal cigarette smoke are at high risk for developmental and behavioral disorders," said lead researcher Dr. Shabih Hasan, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Calgary.

Furthermore babies born to women who smoked during pregnancy also took longer to recover from depleted oxygen levels in the blood as compared to babies born to non-smoking mothers.

The study is due to appear in the September issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

SIDS is the leading cause of death among infants who are 1 month to 1 year old and is called cot death as it usually occurs when the infant is sleeping. Earlier studies have linked genetics to SIDS, but this is the first study to linked pre-natal smoking to an increased risk of the tragic event. 

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