Chronic Gut Pain in Kids Tied to Mood Disorder

Children with recurrent abdominal pain often have anxiety and depression, according to findings from a small study.

Dr. John V. Campo and colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, in Pennsylvania, examined 42 children between 8 and 15 years old who were seen in primary care practice because of chronic abdominal pain. For comparison purposes, they were matched to 38 similar kids being seen for routine care. The children in the pain group were considerably more likely than the comparison group to have a psychiatric diagnosis, the investigators report in the journal Pediatrics. Of the 42 children with abdominal pain, 33 had an anxiety disorder and 18 had a depressive disorder. Also, levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms were higher in the children with recurrent pain, and they had a greater degree of functional impairment, according to the authors. On average, the complaints of abdominal pain began at 9 years of age, whereas the first recognition of definite anxiety disorder was at 6.25 years of age, and definite depressive disorder at 9.5 years old, Campo’s group found. “Anxiety disorder was significantly more likely to precede the onset of recurrent abdominal pain, developing a mean of 35.2 months beforehand,” the researchers point out. These findings have important implications for treating children with recurrent abdominal pain, they say. Since the “vast majority of affected children will have anxiety or a depressive disorder,” they write, treatments that deal with both the physical and emotional distress “thus seem ideal.” (Source: Pediatrics: Reuters Health: MedLine Plus: April 2004.)