Stopping the sale of budget cigarettes could reduce the number of infant deaths that occur worldwide, a new study has found.

It is already known that high cigarette prices reduce smoking rates, and levels of smoking affect infant mortality. However until now, no studies have looked at the potential link between cigarette prices and infant mortality.

UK researchers decided to look into this further. They analysed almost 54 million births across 23 EU countries, including Ireland, from 2004 to 2014.

During this 10-year period, overall infant mortality fell in all countries from 4.4 deaths per 1,000 births in 2004 to 3.5 deaths per 1,000 births in 2014. Meanwhile, the cost of average priced cigarettes increased during this time in all of the countries studied.

The difference between average priced and budget cigarettes varied from 12% to 26% over the 10 years.

The researchers from Imperial College London found that increases in the average price of cigarettes were linked with reductions in infant mortality.

A €1 increase per pack was linked with 0.23 fewer deaths per 1,000 live births in that same year, and an additional 0.16 fewer deaths per 1,000 live births in the following year.

However, the researchers also found that a 10% increase in the price difference between budget and average priced cigarettes was linked with 0.07 more deaths per 1,000 live births the following year.

This means that 3,195 infant deaths could potentially have been avoided if there had been no price difference between cigarette products over the 10-year period, in other words, if there had been no budget cigarettes available.

The researchers noted that increasing the price of cigarettes reduces smoking in the general population and is especially effective at encouraging young people and those on low incomes to quit the habit.

They believe that the lower infant mortality link with price increases seen in this study is probably due to less exposure to second hand smoke among pregnant women and infants, especially in the home. It may also be due to fewer pregnant women smoking.

The study pointed out that while EU governments have made cigarettes more expensive by increasing taxes, tobacco companies have responded to this with differential pricing strategies, where tax increases are loaded onto premium brands.

This had lead to a price gap between higher and lower priced cigarettes, which gives smokers the option to switch to cheaper products, making tax increases less effective.

"Thanks to tax and price control measures, cigarettes in EU countries are more expensive than ever before. However, the tobacco industry is good at finding loopholes to ensure that budget cigarettes remain available. In this study, we found that the availability of budget cigarettes is associated with more infant deaths," commented lead author, Dr Filippos Filippidis.

The researchers added that tobacco tax policy ‘should be designed to not only increase the average price of cigarettes, but also to eliminate the price difference between higher and lower priced cigarettes'.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, JAMA Pediatrics.