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  • Letter to the Editor
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Response

Journal of Perinatology volume 25, page 294 (2005)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 27 June 2005

To the Editor:

We have no serious disagreement with Malloy and Freeman. In their analysis of SIDS deaths in twins for the years 1987 to 1991, they found a relative risk (RR) of SIDS death in twins, as compared to singletons, to be 2.1.1 For 1995 to 1998, although the rates in both groups are more than 40% lower, we found the RR to be 1.9.2 They pointed out that the main explanatory variables for the difference between twin and singleton SIDS rates were gestational age and birth weight and that when these were accounted for in multivariate analysis the RR in their study dropped to 1.13.1 We also showed much lower relative risks when gestational age differences were taken into account (Table 3).2 At the highest gestational ages, there appeared to be some continuing excess risk in twins, but as they point out in their letter, that is likely to be due in part to more small-for-gestational age (SGA) babies in the twins born at term. We reported SGA to be associated with an RR of 1.53 for SIDS in our data.2 The bottom line is that twinning roughly doubles the risk of SIDS because it leads to SGA and preterm births. To stress that there is no increased risk after these intervening variables are taken into account obscures this underlying causal relationship.

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References

  1. Malloy MH, Freeman DH . Sudden infant death syndrome among twins. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1999;153:736–740.

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  2. Getahun D, Demissie K, Lu SE, Rhoads GG . Sudden infant death syndrome among twin births: United States, 1995–98. J Perinatol 2004;24:544–551.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, University of Medicine and Dentistry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 125 Paterson Street, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Darios Getahun MD, MPH

  2. Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Medicine and Dentistry, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Kitaw Demissie MD, PhD & George G Rhods MD, MPH

  3. Department of Biometrics, School of Public Health, University of Medicine and Dentistry, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Shou-En Lu PhD

Authors
  1. Darios Getahun MD, MPH
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  2. Kitaw Demissie MD, PhD
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  3. George G Rhods MD, MPH
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  4. Shou-En Lu PhD
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Getahun, D., Demissie, K., Rhods, G. et al. Response. J Perinatol 25, 294 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jp.7211248

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