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Updated: Aug 15, 2026

A Pediatric Concussion Model in Mice: Closed Head Injury with Long-Term Disorders (CHILD)
Published on: February 7, 2025
[Secondary headache in children]
1Department of Pediatrics, Tsukubagakuen Hospital.
Insights
Pediatric headaches, with or without fever, often stem from common causes like viral illnesses or migraines. Urgent neuroimaging is crucial for severe symptoms to rule out serious conditions like meningitis or brain tumors.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Neurology
- Clinical Pediatrics
Background:
- Headache is a frequent symptom in pediatric patients, occurring with or without fever.
- Common causes include viral infections, migraines, and trauma.
Observation:
- Headache accompanied by fever, vomiting, and meningeal signs warrants investigation for meningitis.
- Blood pressure monitoring is essential, as hypertension can rarely cause headaches in children.
- Neuroimaging is indicated for neurological abnormalities, atypical headache patterns, or significant changes in existing headaches.
Findings:
- While uncommon, serious underlying conditions like brain tumors or intracranial hemorrhage require immediate diagnosis.
- Prompt neuroimaging facilitates the timely identification of urgent pediatric neurological conditions.
Implications:
- This highlights the importance of a systematic approach to diagnosing pediatric headaches.
- Early and accurate diagnosis through appropriate investigations can prevent severe outcomes.
Abstract:
Headache is one of the common symptoms of fever and headache without fever is also not rare in general pediatric clinics. The common causes of these headaches involve extracranial infection due to viral illness, migraine and trauma. Headache with vomiting, fever and meningeal signs suggests meningitis. Taking blood pressure is necessary, even though headache caused by hypertension is rare in children. Neuroimaging should be performed with abnormal neurological findings, atypical headache pattern, or significant change of preexisting headache. Serious underlying diseases, such as brain tumor or intracranial hemorrhage, are uncommon, however they should be diagnosed immediately using neuroimaging because of their urgency.
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