14 DAY TRIAL // In a finding that could change the way in which healthcare experts search for patients predisposed to experiencing debilitating migraines, researchers have recently discovered a genetic risk factor that seems to be associated with a common type of the condition.
The new work was conducted on a batch featuring no less than 50,000 individuals, who all had their genetic data looked over by an international collaboration of scientists.
“This is the first time we have been able to peer into the genomes of many thousands of people and find genetic clues to understand common migraine,” explains team member Dr Aarno Palotie.
“Studies of this kind are possible only through large-scale international collaboration – bringing together the wealth of data with the right expertise and resources – so that we could pick out this genetic variant,” reveals Palotie.
“This discovery opens new doors to understand common human diseases,” he adds. The expert is the chair of the International Headache Genetics Consortium of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
The new data is to be used for developing new means of preventing migraine attacks in the people who are most predisposed to experiencing them. Such drugs could help millions around the world.
Migraine is a debilitating condition, that renders people unable to concentrate fully, and which prevents them from conducting a series of activities that would otherwise be a fairly easy to do.
The new results were derived from a type of investigation known as a genome-wide association study (GWAS). Generally, about one in six women and one in twelve men suffer from reoccurring migraines.
“Although the patients in the study were all diagnosed with common migraine, they were largely recruited from specialist headache clinics,” adds Dr Gisela Terwindt.
“Because they are attending headache clinics they are likely to represent only the more extreme end of those who suffer common migraine,” adds the expert, who is a senior author of the investigation.
“In the future, we should look at associations across the general population, including also people who are less severely affected,” she says.
Terwindt is based at the Leiden University Medical Center. She was part of the team that identified the genes PGCP and MTDH/AEG-1 as being responsible for elevating or lowering the risk of migraines.
These particular DNA variants can be found on Chromosome 8, the team adds. “This research opens the door for new studies to look in depth at the biology of the disease and how this alteration in particular may exert its effect,” adds Christian Kubisch, a professor at the University of Ulm, in Germany.