Colicky Infants at Higher Risk of Migraine

A very common condition in infancy - colic - which makes a healthy baby cry constantly for hours, plays a major role in childhood migraine, researchers reveal.

A newborn is considered to be colic, when it cries continuously for more than three hours a day and three days in a week. According to Medline Plus, National Institute of Health's website, about one in five babies in the country develops colic between three and six weeks of age. The health experts cite many reasons behind the occurrence - intestinal gas, hunger, overfeeding, fear, frustration, excitement or inability to bear with certain foods or certain elements contained in breast milk or formula milk.

A team of Paris-based researchers led by Silvia Romanello looked at 208 children aged between 6 and 18. All the children had sought emergency care for migraine between April and June in 2012. To reach a conclusion, researchers compared the participants to another group of 471 children who had sought medical help for minor trauma. Through questionnaires and health records, researchers identified the participants who had colic in infancy.

Migraine was more common among children with a history of infantile colic (72.6 percent) than others (26.5 percent).  Researchers later re-confirmed their findings on another set of 120 children who were clinically diagnosed with tension-type headaches.  

"The presence of migraine in children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years was associated with a history of infantile colic," the researchers, while concluding their study, wrote.

Migraine is a headache disorder that is accompanied by nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. According to the American Migraine Prevalence and Prevention (AMPP) Study, a one-year prevalence of migraine among U.S. children aged between 12 and 19 is 6.3 percent. According to Migraine.com, migraine is common even among infants, and boys are at a higher risk of developing the condition early (at 7 years) compared to girls (10 years).

The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has already started drawing attention from experts and compel them to seek the actual cause behind colic.

"We've assumed for some time that colic was a gastrointestinal phenomenon, but in fact, that may not necessarily be true," Andrew Charles, a professor of neurology and director of the Headache Research and Treatment Program at UCLA School of Medicine, who was not involved with the study, told USA TODAY. "That's one of the things that may surprise people about this study. It points out the possibility that this may be more of a brain issue than a gut issue."