Wheezy children and other stories . . .

Day and night, winter and summer, wheezy children flock through the doors of primary care centres, emergency departments, and paediatric wards. They may be assessed and reassessed by the same doctor or by different ones. Video recordings of 27 acutely wheezing children (aged 3 months to 7 years) were made in the emergency department of a Dutch teaching hospital, before and after treatment with inhaled bronchodilators (Archives of Disease in Childhood 2015, doi:10.1136/archdischild-2014-307143). Different doctors often disagreed in their ranking of key clinical features, although when retested on their own assessments two weeks later, they replicated their original opinions quite well.

Infant colic and migraine are two of the most common recurring pain syndromes, and if you had colic as a baby you seem more likely to get migraine later on. Findings from case-control studies have been strengthened by prospective data from the Finnish Family Competence Study, which began recruiting in utero in 1986 …