Abstract
Dear Sir Marugan and colleagues hypothesize the continuity between functional abdominal pain (FAP) in children and migraine in adulthood. They support this continuity with their data on the presence of ‘adult’ migraine in children suffering on FAP and with reference to our study (1), which evidenced the similarities between FAP and migraine or tension-type headache. However, our study is a psychological analysis of children with FAP compared with children with migraine (or tension-type headache), stressing the continuity of the two disorders only form the psychological point of view (presence of internalizing disorders). In our opinion, psychological similarities may be due to the presence of chronic recurrent pain conditions, and not to the relationship of the two disorders. On one hand, we have to deal with the evidence that ‘most pain is multiple’ (2). On the other, we have to ask ‘what is the role of psychological factors in chronic pain’, because of the strong relationship between multiple pain conditions and the worsening of the psychological situation not only in children (3), but also in adults (4), and independent of the kind of pain.