Infantile colic: maternal smoking as potential risk factor 2000; 83:302-3
Babies whose mothers smoke are twice as likely to suffer colic-excessive bouts of crying-as the babies of non-smokers, suggests research in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Health professionals interviewed a representative sample of parents of over 3000 infants up to the age of six months. They wanted to know about the babies' crying behaviour, whether they were bottle or breast fed, and how much the parents smoked. Colic was defined as crying for more than three hours a day on more than three days of the week..
Colic was twice as likely in very young babies whose mothers smoked between 15 and 50 cigarettes a day as in those whose mothers were non-smokers. Breastfed infants were less likely to be colicky than bottle-fed infants when their mothers smoked.
Contact:
Dr Sijmen Reijneveld, Netherlands Organisation of Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Institution of Prevention and Health, Leiden, The Netherlands. SA.Reijneveld@pg.tno.nl
Archives of Disease in Childhood