Babies 'smoke' when parents do, study confirms

NEW YORK, June 20 (Reuters) Babies with at least one parent who smokes have five times as much cotinine, a nicotine byproduct, in their urine than infants whose parents are non-smokers, UK researchers report.

''Our findings clearly show that by accumulating cotinine, babies become heavy passive smokers secondary to the active smoking of parents,'' Dr Mike Wailoo of the University of Leicester and colleagues write in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

''This is the first time we've got direct information on the effect of smoking in homes on babies,'' Wailoo told Reuters Health.

''It clarifies and I think it firms up information that we all thought we had.'' He added that cotinine is just one of thousands of potentially harmful nicotine byproducts that can accumulate in infants' bodies.

Parental smoking is a leading risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome, Wailoo and his colleagues note in their report. To better understand how harmful products of cigarette smoke might accumulate in babies' bodies, the researchers measured the amount of cotinine in the urine of 104 12-week-olds, 71 of whom had parents who smoked.

On average, children with at least one smoking parent had 5.58 times as much cotinine in their urine as babies living in non-smoking homes.

Infants who slept with their parents tended to have higher cotinine levels, which may have been because they had greater exposure to parents' smoke-contaminated clothing, Wailoo and his team note. The temperature in an infant's room also influenced cotinine levels, with lower temperature tied to higher amounts of the nicotine metabolite.

The UK is about to introduce laws banning smoking in public places, Wailoo noted in an interview. While such an approach likely wouldn't discourage people from smoking in their homes, he added, ''it's a matter of changing behavior and if we can alert people to this then we might have an impact.'' REUTERS AGL KN1045