Acupuncture may help babies stop crying

London, January 17

Acupuncture may effectively treat babies who suffer from infantile colic — a condition that causes them to cry excessively, a new study has found.

Excessive crying in babies is an issue for up to one in five families, causing pain for the baby and stress for the parents.

Acupuncture is associated with relieving pain, restoring gut function and inducing calm, and researchers wanted to see if it might also resolve excessive crying in colicky babies — those who cry for more than three hours a day on three or more days of the week.

Researchers from Lund University in Sweden compared two types of acupuncture with standard care alone in 147 babies whose colic was confirmed at statutory routine check-ups in four child health centres in Sweden.

All the babies were aged between two and eight weeks of age and were otherwise healthy.

Each child was randomly allocated to one of three groups (A to C), which required additional twice weekly visits to the child health centre for two weeks.

Group A received standard minimal acupuncture at one acupuncture point for two to five seconds without stimulation; group B were given tailored acupuncture at a maximum of five acupuncture points for up to 30 seconds with mild stimulation; and group C received no acupuncture.

Parents were asked to keep a detailed diary of how often and how long their child cried.

In all, 144 babies completed the two week trial. The amount of time spent crying excessively fell in all three groups, which is not unexpected as colic tends to clear up by itself eventually, said the researchers.

However, the magnitude of this reduction was greater in those given either type of acupuncture than it was in those given standard care alone.

A significantly higher proportion of babies in the acupuncture groups no longer fulfilled the criteria for colic compared with those in the standard care group after two weeks of treatment.

During the second week of the trial, 16 babies in group A still had infantile colic, compared with 21 in group B and 31 in group C.

Parents continued to record bouts of crying for six days after their final clinic visit and these differences in outcome between the three groups were still evident then.

The babies seemed to tolerate acupuncture fairly well. Out of 388 treatments given, the baby did not cry at all on 200 occasions, and cried for less than a minute on 157 occasions.

Only 31 treatments triggered a crying jag of more than one minute. A single drop of blood was evident in 15 treatments.

"Fussing and crying are normal communications for a baby, therefore a reduction to normal levels (rather than silence) is the goal of treatment," researchers said.

"For those infants that continue to cry for more than three hours per day, acupuncture may be an effective treatment option," they said

The research was published in the journal Acupuncture in Medicine. — PTI