Removing allergens from breast milk may ease colic

The question: Just what causes the crying and fussing of a colicky baby remains a bit of a mystery. In breast-fed infants, might changing their mothers’ diet – by eliminating foods that cause allergic reactions in some people – alleviate the babies’ discomfort?

This study randomly assigned the mothers of 107 colicky infants, who were about 6 weeks old, either to exclude certain foods (cow’s milk, eggs, nuts, wheat, soy and fish) or to include these foods in their diet. Both groups avoided food preservatives, coloring and additives, and all infants were breast-fed exclusively. After one week, 74 percent of the mothers on the low-allergen diet (vs. 37 percent of the others) reported that their babies’ crying and fussing time had decreased more than 25 percent from before the diets changed. Over a 48-hour period at the end of the study, babies in the low-allergen group cried and fussed about three hours less than the other babies.

Who may be affected by these findings? Mothers of babies with colic. From 20 to 30 percent of all newborns develop colic during their first few months.

Caveats: The study may not have been long enough to ensure that breast milk contained no traces of the foods eliminated from the diets. Whether other foods or health factors may have contributed to the babies’ distress was not determined.

Find this study: November issue of Pediatrics; abstract available online at www.pediatrics.org.

Learn more about colic at www.familydoctor.org and www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/encyclopedia.html.