Parental Factors Affecting the Incidence of Infantile Colic: A Systematic Review

Context:

 Infantile Colic (IC) is an essential problem in infancy that is influenced by factors related to infants and parents. The parental factors associated with colic have not been comprehensively assessed. 

The present systematic review was conducted to investigate the parental factors affecting the incidence of IC.
Data Sources: Databases, including PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, Google scholar, as well as Scientific Information Database (SID), and Magiran (Iranian websites) were searched to identify all eligible papers concerning parental factors affecting infantile CI. The registration number of this study was CRD42020163518 in the PROSPERO database.

Study Selection:

 A total of 423 relevant articles published up to the end of December 2019 were assessed. The selected articles were screened based on duplicated, eligibility criteria, and quality appraisal. The main inclusion criteria were observational studies and articles in Persian and English languages.

Data Extraction: 

The Mesh keywords and Boolean operators included (“risk factors” OR “causality”) AND (“parents” OR “fathers” OR “mothers”) AND (“infant”) AND (“colic”). Consequently, 18 papers were thoroughly studied and the related data were extracted. Two researchers independently performed the data extraction and quality assessment based on the STROBE checklist from the observational studies. The information of selected studies was recorded in a table, i.e. consisted of authors’ names, purpose, design, population, and main results.

Final articles consisted of 10 prospective, 6 cross-sectional, and 2 case-control studies. Eventually, the effective factors were placed in 6 categories, as follows: psychological factors, physical factors, taking medications, perinatal factors, family’s socioeconomic status, and maternal diet. The most important characteristics predisposing to IC were parental depression, anxiety, smoking, maternal history of migraine, young age, primiparity, low family support, high socioeconomic status, high-risk pregnancies, and delivery, taking antibiotics, as well as the consumption of celery, onions, and bananas.

Various parental factors affect the incidence of colic. Identifying these risk factors and accurate planning can be beneficial in the prevention and treatment of IC.