Children who have growing pains are more likely than their peers to experience migraines later in life. The finding suggests that growing pains could be an early indicator of migraines.
鈥� or sore, aching limbs in adolescence 鈥� are often attributed to rapid childhood growth. However, there is no evidence to support this, and their cause remains unclear.
Like migraines, growing pains develop rapidly and often recur. So, at the Federal University of the Parna铆ba Delta in Brazil and his colleagues tracked the incidence of both conditions in 100 children. All the participants were between 5 and 10 years old when they joined the study. Over the next five years approximately half of them experienced growing pains, which doctors confirmed weren鈥檛 due to an identifiable cause such as physical injury. None of the children had a history of migraines prior to joining the study.
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After the five-year study period, the participants completed a questionnaire to assess whether they had experienced headache symptoms in the previous three months. The results showed that 76 per cent of children with growing pains experienced a headache. Just 22 per cent of children without growing pains experienced a headache.
Additionally, more than half of the children with growing pains were judged to have had a migraine 鈥� a throbbing, pulsing headache that can increase sensitivity to light or sound. The same was true for less than 6 per cent of those without growing pains.
The finding suggests that growing pains and migraines share a common underlying cause, says Silva-N茅to.
at Northwell Health in New York says that one possibility is that the constriction and relaxation of blood vessels, which drives migraines, may also contribute to the throbbing aches of growing pains. 鈥淚 think the next step is to find out what happens to [children鈥檚] blood supply in their legs at baseline and during the growing pains,鈥� he says. This can be done using an ultrasound test.
A difference in blood flow would support the two conditions sharing the same mechanism. It would also imply that migraine medications could alleviate growing pains, says Kothare.
The study findings may also help paediatricians diagnose migraines in children sooner, says Silva-N茅to.
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