© 2003 American Public Health Association
The authors are with the Menzies Centre for Population Health Research, University of Tasmania, Hobart. Anne-Louise Ponsonby is also with the National Centre for Epidemiology and Public Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Leigh Blizzard, PhD, Menzies Centre for Population Health Research, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 23, Hobart 7001, Australia (e-mail: leigh.blizzard{at}utas.edu.au).
Objectives. We sought to quantify the effect of good smoking hygiene on infant risk of respiratory tract infection in the first 12 months of life. Methods. A cohort of 4486 infants in Tasmania, Australia, was followed from birth to 12 months of age for hospitalization with respiratory infection. Case ascertainment was 98.2%. Results. Relative to the infants of mothers who smoked postpartum but never in the same room with their infants, risk of hospitalization was 56% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 13%, 119%) higher if the mother smoked in the same room with the infant, 73% (95% CI = 18%, 157%) higher if the mother smoked when holding the infant, and 95% (95% CI = 28%, 298%) higher if the mother smoked while feeding the infant. Conclusions. Parents who smoke should not smoke with their infants present in the same room.
Postnatal exposure of infants to cigarette smoke is causally associated with an increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia, increased prevalence of fluid in the middle ear, symptoms of upper respiratory tract irritation, and a small but significant reduction in lung function.1 This exposure also has been linked with new cases of childhood asthma and with additional episodes and increased severity of symptoms in asthmatic children.1,2 Medical authorities therefore recommend that parents provide a smoke-free environment for infants and children. The Committee on Substance Abuse of the American Academy of Pediatrics advocates that caregivers ask parents about tobacco use and smoke exposure at each consultation from the first prenatal visit onward. Parents who smoke should be offered assistance to stop smoking. Those parents who cannot quit should be encouraged to smoke outside the home.3 Earlier studies have suggested that the physical distance between the new baby and the smoking parent correlates with the amount of cotinine in the babys urine,3,4 that urinary cotinine concentrations are lower when parents refrain from smoking in the same room with the baby,57 and that lower urinary cotinine is associated with reduced risk of respiratory infection in some811 though not all12 studies of infants. The protective contribution of not smoking in the vicinity of the infant has not been fully evaluated for respiratory tract infection, however. We undertook the first investigation of whether parents who smoke can nevertheless reduce the increased risk of respiratory infection for their infants by exercising good "smoking hygiene" (i.e., never smoking in the same room with the infant or while holding or feeding the infant). We report the results of a 12-month follow-up on a cohort of 4486 infants conducted with extensive standardized information on parental smoking and near-complete ascertainment of infants hospitalized with respiratory infection in the first 12 months of life.
The Cohort Study The cohort came from the Tasmanian Infant Health Survey (TIHS), conducted from 1988 to 1995 to investigate the etiology of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and other causes of infant mortality and morbidity in Tasmania.13 Eligibility of singleton infants for inclusion in the TIHS was assessed using a scoring system to identify those at highest risk of SIDS.14 (Infants from multiple births also were eligible for inclusion but ultimately were excluded from the group in this report; see "Participants and Selection Procedures.") Higher weighting was given for young maternal age, low birthweight (< 2500 g), autumn or winter month of birth, male sex, a short duration of second stage of labor, and intention to bottle-feed rather than to breastfeed.14 The sample of eligible infants represented approximately one-fifth of live births in the state of Tasmania. Infants were excluded if they had severe neonatal disease or major congenital anomalies, if they were intended for adoption, or if they were nonresidents of the main island of Tasmania. From January 1, 1988, to December 31, 1995, 11 070 live-born infants in Tasmania were eligible for inclusion in the survey. We obtained data on 3 occasions, during the 1st, 5th, and 11th weeks postpartum. The first interview, which was conducted in the hospital, was delayed until 40 weeks postconceptional age for premature infants (those of gestation less than 37 weeks). During this interview we collected information on prenatal smoking, including the number of cigarettes smoked daily by the mother during each trimester of pregnancy and her exposure to smoking by others. The second interview was conducted at a home visit at a median postnatal age of 33 days (interquartile range: 3040 days). During this interview we collected information on postnatal smoking, including the number of cigarettes smoked daily by the mother and information on smoking hygiene (whether the mother smoked in the same room with the infant or while holding or feeding the infant). We also gathered the same information for other smokers in the household. The third interview was conducted by telephone at a median postnatal age of 80 days (interquartile range: 7393 days). We asked no further questions on maternal smoking but did ask mothers about illnesses the infant had suffered, including colds, tonsillitis, and chest infections. The families consented to the data being used to investigate infant morbidity and mortality during the first year of life. We obtained ethical approval from the ethics committee of the University of Tasmania, Hobart.
Validation of Measurements of Smoking Hygiene
Participants and Selection Procedures
Definition of Respiratory Infection
Hospital Admission for Respiratory Infection There are 3 other hospitals in southern Tasmania, each privately owned. One of those hospitals did not admit any pediatric patients during 1988 to 1996. Another did not admit any infants from our sample. The third hospital admitted pediatric patients, but we did not have access to identifying information. Based on a review of the admission records of this hospital for the 2-year period March 1995 to February 1997 and the percentage of mothers in our sample (27.4%) and in southern Tasmania20 with private health insurance, we estimate that around 7 of the 77 pediatric patients admitted by this hospital during 1988 to 1996 were infants from our sample. Not having information for these infants reduced case ascertainment by only 1.8% (n = 7).
Data Analysis To examine the sensitivity of our results to the nonascertainment of 7 cases, we reestimated the relative risk (RR) of respiratory infection for maternal smoking after reclassifying as diseased (admitted to hospital with a respiratory infection) 7 infants chosen at random from among the nondiseased infants of mothers with private health insurance. The measure of maternal smoking was smoking hygiene (mother not a smoker, mother never smokes in the same room with the baby, mother sometimes/always smokes in the same room with the baby). We report results for 3 distributions of reclassified infants. These were good smoking hygiene (070) at one extreme, poor smoking hygiene (007) at the other, and an intermediate distribution (612) of 9 diseased infants that quite closely matched the actual distribution (43714) among diseased infants of mothers with private health insurance. We performed this procedure 10 000 times for each distribution and report mean values of the RR estimates and of the 95% confidence limits.
Risk of Respiratory Infection In this cohort of singleton infants, 7.8% were hospitalized for a respiratory tract infection during the first 12 months of life.
Infant, Maternal, and Family Factors Associated With Risk
When interviewed in the fifth postnatal week, 48.6% of the mothers were smoking. Their infants had a 50% greater risk (RR = 1.50 [95% CI = 1.22, 1.87]) than the infants of nonsmokers of having had a respiratory infection, and risk increased with the number of cigarettes smoked per day (Table 1
Smoking in the Same Room With the Baby
The infants of mothers with poor smoking hygiene had a 56% greater risk of hospitalization with respiratory infection than the mothers who smoked but never in the same room with the baby (Table 3
Upper vs Lower Respiratory Tract Infections The respiratory infection cases included 121 infants with an upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) and 258 infants with a lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). Whereas the risk increase for any postnatal maternal smoking was less for URTI (RR = 1.09 [95% CI = 0.76, 1.57]) than for LRTI (RR = 1.69 [95% CI = 1.31, 2.18]), the elevation in risk for maternal poor smoking hygiene was similar. The adjusted RRs were 1.68 (95% CI = 0.92, 3.26) for URTI and 1.49 (95% CI = 1.04, 2.20) for LRTI.
Prenatal vs Postnatal Smoking To further examine this issue, we identified all 65 mothers who had smoked in the postnatal period but not during pregnancy. The risk (10.7%) of respiratory infection for their infants was greater than the risk (6.0%) for infants of mothers who did not smoke at either time. Adjusted for the cohort selection factors, the RR estimate for this postnatal-only smoking was 1.58 (95% CI = 0.69, 3.00). Adjusting also for the number of other smokers in the household (RR = 1.51 [95% CI = 0.66, 2.89]) or maternal education (RR = 1.57 [95% CI = 0.69, 2.98]) resulted in only minor changes.
Sensitivity of Results to Incomplete Ascertainment
Smoking When Holding or Feeding the Infant
Smoking Hygiene and Respiratory Infection Reported by Mothers
In this study, we followed a cohort of 4486 infants with information on in utero and postnatal exposure to tobacco smoke for admission to the hospital with respiratory tract infection during the first 12 months of life. The infants of mothers who smoked at the end of the first postnatal month had a 50% higher risk of hospitalization with respiratory infection than did the infants of nonsmokers. Among infants of mothers who smoked, however, risk was significantly lower for those whose mothers exercised good smoking hygiene by never smoking in the same room with the infant. If these associations are causal, mothers who find it difficult to give up smoking can at least reduce the susceptibility of their infants to serious respiratory infection. Exercising good smoking hygienenot smoking in the same room with the babyeliminated more than 70% of the excess risk of hospitalization with respiratory infection associated with maternal postnatal smoking. One of the strengths of this study is that information was collected in a standardized way over time. Selection bias due to nonresponse24 is unlikely to be a major problem because of the high response rates. Nearly all hospital admissions for respiratory infection were ascertained, and the small number of cases not ascertained did not unduly influence the results. Although there is potential for admission rate bias24 if some infants were admitted to the hospital by clinicians to provide respite from unfavorable home environments, we found that poor smoking hygiene also increased the risk of parent-reported colds, tonsillitis, and chest infections for nonhospitalized infants. Parental reports of those infections were strongly associated with hospitalization with respiratory infection in the full sample, indicating that these reports had validity and further suggesting that the differences in risk due to smoking hygiene are real. Although the smoking data are based on self-report, reporting bias is an unlikely explanation of these findings. The results of a validation study7 conducted using urinary cotinine analysis in a sample of 100 infants from the cohort suggest that the maternal reports of smoking hygiene are reliable.7 In addition, an examination of the cluster of maternal factors associated with the reports of smoking hygiene revealed some evidence of construct validity for the hygiene data. The mothers with good smoking hygiene at 4 weeks of infant age were generally older, breastfeeding, and better educated. They smoked fewer cigarettes per day and less often lived with other smokers; the smokers they did live with more often also practiced good hygiene. These mothers more often lived in households with more rooms per smoker, plausibly offering more opportunity to provide a smoke-free area for the infant. Furthermore, adding to the confidence that can be placed in these results, respiratory outcomes have been directly related to higher (later) birth order,25,26 parental smoking,27,28 male sex,29 and short duration of breastfeeding30 in previous studies. This cohort comprised one-fifth of live births in the defined geographical area, but weighting in selection of individual infants was given to risk factors for SIDS. The cohort is not representative of the general infant population of Australia, but it does not need to be for inferences about disease causation to be valid.23,31 What matters in a study to test causal hypotheses is that the sample contains a wide distribution of the study factor and its effect modifiers.31 A particular advantage of this study base, given that maternal postnatal smoking was the principal study factor, was the high proportion of mothers who smoked. The confounding effects of the maternal and infant factors used in selection were always taken into account in the multivariate analyses. Consistent with previous findings for this cohort,17 poor postnatal smoking hygiene was associated with prenatal smoking. We cannot discount the possibility that the higher risk of respiratory infection for infants of mothers with poor smoking hygiene was due in part to exposure in utero, but our results and other findings suggest that postnatal smoking hygiene itself presents a relevant exposure. In this study, adjusting for prenatal smoking did not diminish the estimated effect of poor postnatal smoking hygiene. Furthermore, postnatal-only exposure was associated with an elevation in risk similar to postnatal-plus-prenatal exposure, and in households of mothers who did not smoke, smoking by others was associated with increased risk in a doseresponse fashion. There have been similar findings in other studies of nonsmoking mothers.27 In conclusion, the risk of respiratory tract infection requiring hospitalization in the first year of life for the infants of mothers who smoked in the postnatal period was least for those whose mothers did not smoke in the same room with them. Not smoking at all is the safest option, but mothers who find it difficult not to smoke postpartum can at least reduce 1 of the deleterious effects of their smoking on the respiratory health of their infants. This first report of a protective effect of good smoking hygiene on respiratory tract infection provides quantitative evidence to support the current recommendations3 that infants should not be exposed to tobacco smoke.
This study was funded in part by a research grant awarded by the Royal Hobart Hospital. We thank the hospital for making available its records of pediatric admissions. Human Participant Protection The ethics committee of the University of Tasmania approved this project.
L. Blizzard contributed to planning this study, undertook the data analysis, and drafted the manuscript. A.-L. Ponsonby contributed to planning the main cohort study, and devised and planned this study. T. Dwyer devised and planned the main cohort study. J. A. Cochrane undertook the data linkage. All authors participated in data interpretation and in revising the manuscript. Accepted for publication July 1, 2002.
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