News: Headache for Parents, Migraine for Infants?

Colic—defined as inconsolable crying in an otherwise healthy infant for more than three hours a day, for more than three days a week, for three weeks or more—has long been a puzzle for doctors and an exhausting ordeal for parents. So when Anna Zanin, a pediatrician in Paris, noticed that babies with colic and children with migraines share certain symptoms, she decided to explore a possible association between the two conditions.

Her research, conducted with a large team of doctors and researchers and published in JAMA, found that 73 percent of children with migraine were colicky babies, compared to 27 percent of controls. While Zanin emphasizes that further evidence is needed to determine whether there's any causal link, the numbers suggest that migraine and colic may indeed be related. (Other hypotheses on the possible causes of colic include milk allergies, high sensitivity to stimuli, or a surplus of gas-producing bacteria in the gut.)

Jean-Francois Lemay, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Calgary, warns that while the JAMA study provides an important piece to solving the colic puzzle, it's far too soon to start testing migraine medications in babies. Still, he's hopeful that the new findings may offer a possible path to a cure.

While colic poses few long-term health risks for infants, "it can be devastating," Lemay says. "The crying will eventually stop, but in some cases the relationship between the parent and infant is changed for life."