Does colic have neurologic origins?

Does colic have neurologic origins?


If you have ever felt like crying inconsolably after being forced out of a warm, quiet bed on a Monday morning, you may have more in common with a two-month-old infant than you think.

At two months, colic peaks in babies. Pediatricians consider infants to have colic when they cry for more than three hours per day, three days a week, for three weeks. During these bouts of crying, parents can do next to nothing to console their babies.

Previously, physicians suspected gastrointestinal problems as a cause of colic, but no definite link has been established. So researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, began to suspect a neurologic cause.

They surveyed 154 mothers at their infants’ two-month check up, the age at which colic seems to peak. The researchers found that mothers who suffered migraines were 2.5 times more likely to have babies with colic. Twenty-nine percent of the babies who had colic had mothers who experienced migraine headaches, while 11 percent of the colicky babies had mothers who did not suffer migraines.

The California researchers believe colic may be an early symptom of a set of conditions called childhood periodic syndromes. These syndromes include a condition in which infants’ heads may be curved in one position for set amounts of time as well as nausea, agitation and infantile migraine. The syndromes may mean the babies are more likely to develop migraines in later life.

Researchers think that babies with colic could be more sensitive to all of the new stimuli in their life outside the womb. Instead of being protected in a dark, warm place, babies now have to contend with light, noise and a world of color.

Sounds like something only a migraine sufferer — or a person with a 9-to-5 job — can sympathize with.

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