Gentle manipulation may help infants suffering from colic, according to an expert analysis published today.
Colic is the most common complaint that doctors have to deal with in the first six months of a child’s life.
Although it is regarded as unlikely to harm the child, it causes persistent crying and places stress on new parents.
Today’s research from Southampton University says that manipulative treatments such as chiropractic and osteopathy seem to be safe and may improve a child’s condition – although conclusions are based on parent observations.
Researchers found a total of six studies involving some 325 infants, according to a report in the Cochrane Library.
Researcher Professor George Lewith said: "The majority of the included trials indicate that the parents of infants receiving manipulative therapies reported fewer hours crying per day than parents whose infants did not.
"This difference is statistically significant and important for those families who experience this condition. These studies show that in this small sample there were no adverse effects from using these treatments.
"However, we recognise that the collection of studies in our review is small and prone to bias which means we cannot arrive at a definitive conclusion about the effectiveness of manipulative therapies for infantile colic."
Dobson D, Lucassen PLBJ, Miller JJ, Vlieger AM, Prescott P, Lewith G. Manipulative therapies for infantile colic. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews December 12 2012, Issue 12. Art. No.: CD004796. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD004796.pub2
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