Around 120 baby deaths could be prevented in the UK every year if parents stopped sharing beds with their children, research suggests.

A new study found breastfed babies under the age of three months who slept in their parents' beds faced a five-fold risk of cot death.

It said about 40% of the 300 cot-death cases in the UK each year could be prevented if parents avoided taking children into their beds for sleeping.

The research, published in the BMJ Open, found 22% of cot deaths happened when babies were in their parents' bed. It estimates that 88% of these would not have happened if bed-sharing had been avoided.