Is Infantile Colic an Early Life Expression of Childhood Migraine?

Migraine is the most common childhood recurrent primary headache syndrome and infantile colic is a common cause of infantile cry. The pathogenesis of migraine and colic has not been well established and different factors may cause them. There is an association between infantile colic and the occurrence of childhood migraine. We aimed to assess whether infantile colic could be noted as an early life expression of childhood migraine or not.

Materials & Methods

This retrospective case-control study was conducted on 5-15-year-old children in Rasht, Iran during 2015-2016. Forty-one cases were children with migraine with or without aura. Overall, 123 Control participants were children with the same age referred to the pediatric clinic for routine care. Data were gathered by a checklist including age, sex, birth weight, family history of migraine, the occurrence of colic and type of feeding during infancy. Data were reported by descriptive statistics and analyzed by Fisher exact test using SPSS ver. 19.

Results

Overall, 164 children with the mean age of 8.36± 2.53 yr were enrolled.

Seventeen (41.46%) children with migraine vs. 44 (35.7%) children in control group had the positive history of infantile colic and Fisher exact test noted significant relation between migraine and colic. Thirty-three children with infantile colic (46.57%) had the positive family history of migraine, which was significantly higher than 27 children without colic (29.7%). There was a significant relation between infantile feeding and migraine.

Conclusion

There is a probable relation between colic and migraine, therefore, migraine and colic as 2 pain syndromes may have a common pathophysiology and further investigations on this common pathophysiology is justified.