Prevalence and persistence of stomach ache and headache among children. Follow‐up of a cohort of Norwegian children from 4 to 10 years of age

Abstract

Results from a prospective cohort of 136 children, from 4 to 10 years of age, indicated that stomach ache was almost as prevalent among preschool children as children of school age. Headache was almost absent among 4-year-olds but prevalent at 10 years of age. Generally, early pain complaints were persistent. The co-occurrence of stomach ache and headache increased from 4% of children at 4 years of age to 20% when they reached 10 years of age.

Adult Outcomes of Pediatric Recurrent Abdominal Pain: Do They Just Grow Out of It?

“…Given our small sample size, a meaningful regression analysis addressing whether trends toward greater somatic symptom reporting in the RAP group would fall away once psychiatric disorder was controlled for in the analysis was not feasible. The relatively high rate of migraine in young adults with a history of childhood RAP is nevertheless intriguing given reports that RAP may bear a special association with headache 5 and migraine 3,8,9 in childhood, and the consistent association of migraine with anxiety and depression 46 and with IBS in adults. 47 The relatively specific association between RAP and anxiety across the lifespan is in keeping with previous studies documenting a strong and consistent association between RAP and anxiety during childhood.…”

“…1,2 RAP is common, affecting between 7% to 25% of school-aged children and adolescents, 1,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and may be responsible for 2% to 4% of pediatric office visits. 12 RAP becomes more prevalent with increasing age into adolescence 1,5,7,10 and is more common in girls, 4,13 with an equal gender ratio in early childhood, 11,14 but greater female symptom reporting in late childhood and adolescence. 1,9,10 Specific structural, infectious, inflammatory, or laboratory abnormalities are unusual in RAP, particularly in the absence of "red flags" such as weight loss, gastrointestinal bleeding, pain awakening the child at night, systemic symptoms such as fever, or laboratory evidence of anemia or inflammation.…”

Have There Been Changes in Children's Psychosomatic Symptoms? A 10-Year Comparison From Finland

“…These problems interfere with children's quality of life during a sensitive developmental period 1,2 and are costly for individual families and health services. 3,4 Headache is the most studied somatic symptom among children, and its prevalence is found to vary from 6% 5 to 57%, 6 depending on the definition and classification of headache. Prevalence figures for recurrent abdominal pain among children vary from 9% to 25%, 7,8 and those for recurrent limb pain vary from 2.6% to 33.6%.…”

A questionnaire–based study on prevalence and treatment of headache in young children

“…It is well known that the prevalence of headache increases with age in children [2][3][4]. We documented that a significant number of children began to present with headache and headache symptoms between 10 and 12 years old.…”

“…Causes include migraine and tension headache as well as headache secondary to intracranial and extracranial infections, intracranial mass lesions, and head or neck trauma [1]. Headache occurs in a large proportion of young students and prevalence increases with age [2][3][4]. In addition, by the age of 5, 25% of children have had a notable headache, a proportion that increases to 75% by the age of 15 [5,6].…”