The catch-all phrase for random pains that children and teens have is so common that it even inspired the name of a 1980s sitcom. Yet when scientists dug into the evidence to find out what growing pains actually are, they found out that no one really knows.
The definitions were as random and all over the place as the very pains that kids complain about, the researchers report in the journal Paediatrics.
Although about a third of children have growing pains, the term has long seemed more like folk medicine than an actual medical diagnosis. Even so, parents, teachers and doctors frequently use it when they have no other obvious answer to a particular pain a child or teen might describe.
A group of researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia wanted to find out if there were any research offering a more precise definition or criteria. They combed through eight databases for any papers mentioning growing pains or growth pains in children or adolescents. They found 145 studies and set out to look for common ground: Where do growing pains occur? At what age do they start? Are there any patterns? Risk factors? Common clinical features? Relationships to particular activities?
What they found was that there is “no consensus whatsoever as to what growing pains really are, what they mean, how they’re defined, and how they should be diagnosed”, co-author Steven Kamper, PhD, explained.
“The definitions were really variable, really vague, and sometimes downright contradictory,” he said. “Some studies would suggest growing pains happen in the arms, some in the lower limbs only. Some said it was about muscles, some about joints.”
The closest thing to consistency that they found was that exactly half the studies mentioned the pain being in the lower limbs. Nearly half (48%) described it as happening in the evening or night-time, 42% said it was recurring, 35% reported it as occurring in youths with an otherwise normal physical exam, and 31% said the pain occurred on both sides of the body. Besides these, no other common feature was mentioned in more than 30% of the studies.
“Really curiously,” Kamper said, “more than 80% said nothing about the age at which these growing pains appear.” And 93% of the studies didn’t even mention growth as being related to the pain at all.
Several studies did acknowledge that the cause of growing pains is unknown, and several others considered it a diagnosis of exclusion – that is, it's the diagnosis when everything else has been ruled out.
But that’s hardly a satisfactory explanation for children and their families, so the researchers drew the only reasonable conclusion they could from what they found: “We think it’s important that the term is not used without some qualification or clarification, whether by researchers or clinicians,” Kamper said.
Defining Growing Pains: A Scoping Review
Mary O’Keeffe, Steven Kamper, Laura Montgomery, Amanda Williams, Alexandra Martiniuk, Barbara Lucas, Amabile Dario, Michael Rathleff, Lise Hestbaek, Christopher Williams.
Published in Pediatrics in August 2022
Background and objectives
Up to one third of children may be diagnosed with growing pains, but considerable uncertainty surrounds how to make this diagnosis. The objective of this study was to detail the definitions of growing pains in the medical literature.
Methods
Scoping review with 8 electronic databases and 6 diagnostic classification systems searched from their inception to January 2021. The study selection included peer-reviewed articles or theses referring to “growing pain(s)” or “growth pain(s)” in relation to children or adolescents. Data extraction was performed independently by 2 reviewers.
Results
We included 145 studies and 2 diagnostic systems (ICD-10 and SNOMED). Definition characteristics were grouped into 8 categories: pain location, age of onset, pain pattern, pain trajectory, pain types and risk factors, relationship to activity, severity and functional impact, and physical examination and investigations. There was extremely poor consensus between studies as to the basis for a diagnosis of growing pains. The most consistent component was lower limb pain, which was mentioned in 50% of sources. Pain in the evening or night (48%), episodic or recurrent course (42%), normal physical assessment (35%), and bilateral pain (31%) were the only other components to be mentioned in more than 30% of articles. Notably, more than 80% of studies made no reference to age of onset in their definition, and 93% did not refer to growth. Limitations of this study are that the included studies were not specifically designed to define growing pains.
Pediatrics article – Defining Growing Pains: A Scoping Review (Open access)
Medscape – What Are Growing Pains? Turns Out No One Really Knows (Open access)