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Babies' Excessive Crying
May Signal Later Problems
Healthy infants older than three
months who cry incessantly for no apparent reason may be at risk
for lower IQ and behavior problems in their childhood years,
new study findings suggest.
Such persistent, uncontrollable crying "seems to be a very good
indicator of potential risk," Dr. Malla Rao of the National Institutes
of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, told Reuters Health.
As such, Rao said, parents should not simply "dismiss" their
child's crying as being due to gastrointestinal problems such
as heartburn or colic, but should notify their child's pediatrician. At younger ages, excessive crying among otherwise healthy babies
is usually described as infantile colic, a common condition that
affects up to 40 percent of babies, according to various reports.
Although the constant crying is extremely stressful for mothers
and the baby's other caretakers, colic rarely lasts beyond 12
weeks of age and is not known to impact the infant's long-term
brain development. Whether the same is true when the crying lasts beyond the age
usually associated with colic is unknown. One team of researchers
found that such unexplained crying that lasted for 6 months was
associated with later hyperactivity among 8- and 10-year old
children followed from infancy. Rao and his team investigated
whether such prolonged crying may be associated with abnormal
cognitive development as well. A total of 561 women were enrolled during their second trimester
of pregnancy. Their children were followed until 5 years of age,
with periodic assessments during infancy and afterwards. At the six-week assessment, 63 women -- none of whom were anxious
first-time mothers -- reported that their child had experienced
colic, or daily uncontrolled and unexplained crying that lasted
two weeks or longer. For 15 of these infants, the same behavior
was reported at 13 weeks, beyond the time frame usually associated
with colic. This prolonged crying after the colic stage was associated with
poorer results on tests that measured cognitive development both
in infancy and at 5 years old, Rao and his colleagues report
in Archives of Disease in Childhood. At 6 months of age, for example, infants with prolonged crying
scored nearly five points lower on an intelligence test than
those in the comparison group, who did not show any signs of
colic at any age, and lower than those whose colic did not persist
beyond three months. At 5 years old, the prolonged criers had lower performance and
verbal IQ scores than the comparison group, and also performed
worse on tests measuring eye-hand coordination, the report indicates.
These children were also more likely to be hyperactive and to
have discipline problems than their peers. None of the infants with prolonged crying had any brain-related
or other major health problems that may have put them at increased
risk for developmental problems, the researchers note. Also,
the home environment of these infants was not greatly different
from the others. "Thus these findings indicate that prolonged crying itself may
be a marker of subsequent impaired cognitive development," Rao
and his team write. Parents with children who have prolonged crying should "be aware" that
there is a potential for later cognitive problems, Rao said,
but they should not be "overly worried" that their child will
have a lower IQ. He advised that parents should inform their
child's doctor so they can together monitor the child's speech,
hearing and other developmental milestones. It is "safer to follow" the child's development "rather than
ignore" the warning signs, Rao said. "There's no turning back
the clock later on in life." SOURCE: Archives of Disease in Childhood, November 2004.
Reference
Source 89
November
1, 2004
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