EHC 2023 | Is infant colic an early life expression of migraine?

Prab Prabhakar, MBBS, FRCPCH, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK, discusses the pathophysiology of childhood headaches. He mentions that infant colic is more common in children with migraine and babies who are born to mothers who experience migraine are disproportionately affected by colic. If infant colic is a migrainous disorder, this would have important implications for treatment. Other episodic syndromes that may be associated with migraine, including benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), benign paroxysmal torticollis (BPT), abdominal migraine, or cyclical vomiting syndrome (CVS), occur more rarely in children. These conditions are thought to be early-life manifestations of genes that later in life are expressed as migraine headache. More research is needed to determine if colic is a childhood periodic syndrome associated with migraine and to identify the physiological basis for the association in order to develop strategies to prevent progression to refractory migraine in adulthood. This interview took place during the 7th European Headache Congress (EHC) 2023.

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