Study sheds light on genetic foundation of migraines

Indigophoton · May 3, 2018

The nauseating, often debilitating, headaches affect 15-20 percent of adults in developed countries, yet they remain stubbornly hard to explain. Scientists know that migraines tend to run in families but aren't sure exactly how.

A new study published May 3 in the journal Neuron shows why some families are susceptible to migraines and how genetics may influence the type of migraine they get.
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The article, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-genetic-foundation-migraines.amp

Highlights

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) implicated in familial aggregation of complex disease

PRS explains more phenotypic variance in familial cases than in population cases

Evidence suggests greater role for polygenic load in familial aggregation than rare variants

Higher PRS associated with symptoms of migraine severity and earlier age of onset

Summary
Complex traits, including migraine, often aggregate in families, but the underlying genetic architecture behind this is not well understood. The aggregation could be explained by rare, penetrant variants that segregate according to Mendelian inheritance or by the sufficient polygenic accumulation of common variants, each with an individually small effect, or a combination of the two hypotheses. In 8,319 individuals across 1,589 migraine families, we calculated migraine polygenic risk scores (PRS) and found a significantly higher common variant burden in familial cases (n = 5,317, OR = 1.76, 95% CI = 1.71–1.81, p = 1.7 × 10−109) compared to population cases from the FINRISK cohort (n = 1,101, OR = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.25–1.38, p = 7.2 × 10−17). The PRS explained 1.6% of the phenotypic variance in the population cases and 3.5% in the familial cases (including 2.9% for migraine without aura, 5.5% for migraine with typical aura, and 8.2% for hemiplegic migraine). The results demonstrate a significant contribution of common polygenic variation to the familial aggregation of migraine.
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The paper, https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30322-2

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Study sheds light on genetic foundation of migraines

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