Investigators at the Robert Debre Hospital, Paris, and other centers in France and Italy report a case-control study of 208 consecutive children aged 6 to 18 years presenting to the ED and diagnosed with migraine and controls with minor trauma. Children with migraine (with or without aura) were more likely to have experienced infantile colic than those without migraine (p<0.001). In a second study of 120 children diagnosed with tension-type headache, this association was not found (p=0.10). [1]
COMMENT. An editorial [2] notes that migraine disorders may represent a continuum from colic in infancy to cyclic vomiting syndrome in young children to childhood and adult migraine. Infantile colic is an early form of migraine and is subject to the same genetic factors and environmental triggers. Both are affected by the sleep-wake cycle. Other periodic disorders discussed as migraine variants include benign paroxysmal vertigo and benign paroxysmal torticollis.