Colic has historically been described as a gastrointestinal issue. However, a new study suggests an association between migraines and Colic.

The finding was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and revealed that the likelihood was seven times higher that kids with migraines were previously colicky babies, compared to kids without migraines.

Colic affects nearly one in five infants, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Usually babies with colic cry for over three hours a day, generally at the same time each day, about three days a week. The specific cause of colic is still a mystery, but by the time a baby reaches 12 weeks it usually disappears.

When colicky babies are crying their stomachs look swollen and they sometimes draw their legs close to their bellies. These signs point to disruption in the digestive tract. However, treatments that target digestive system symptoms aren’t very successful at relieving the symptoms of colic.

The authors suggest that migraine is a common cause of headaches in kids. A separate type of headache is a tension headache – which results in elevated pain sensitivity. Associations between these and other kinds of headaches and colic have been brought up but not studied in-depth, according to the researchers.

The current study consisted of 208 children aged 6 to 18 years who reported having migraines in three European tertiary care hospitals between April 2012 and June 2012.

The control group had 471 kids in the same range who visited the emergency department of a hospital for minor trauma during the same time period. A survey pinpointed personal history of infantile colic for control and case participants.

A second study with 120 kids diagnosed with tension headaches was completed to examine the particularity of the link.

The investigators found that children with migraines were more likely to have had colic as infants than those without migraines. This association was not seen in kids with tension headaches.

The authors suggest that more studies are needed to identify the exact association between migraine and colic. They believe molecules known to contribute to modulation of sensory activity could play a part.

The authors conclude:

“The link between infantile colic and migraine could be based on a pathogenetic mechanism common to migraine without aura and also migraine with aura. We found that among migraine characteristics, only pulsatile pain was more frequent in children with a history of infantile colic than among children with migraine but without infantile colic. Infants with colic might experience a similar sensitization of the perivascular nerve terminals in the gut, although this hypothesis needs to be tested.”

A previous study presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 64th Annual Meeting in 2012 revealed that mothers with migraines were more likely to have babies with colic.

Writetn by Kelly Fitzgerald