Chronic migraine: Genetics or environment?

BACKGROUND: The transition from episodic migraine to chronic migraine, migraine chronification, is usually a gradual process, which involves multiple risk factors. To date, studies of the genetic risk factors for chronic migraine have focused primarily on candidate-gene approaches using healthy individuals as controls.

AIMS AND METHODS: In this study, we used a large cohort of migraine families and unrelated migraine patients (n > 2200) with supporting genotype and whole-genome sequencing data. We evaluated whether there are any genetic variants, common or rare, with a specific association to chronic migraine compared with episodic migraine.

RESULTS: We found no aggregation of chronic migraine in families with a clustering of migraine. No specific rare variants gave rise to migraine chronification, and migraine chronification was not associated with a higher polygenic risk score. Migraine chronification was not associated with allelic associations with an odds ratio above 2.65. Assessment of effect sizes with genome-wide significance below an odds ratio of 2.65 requires a genome-wide association study of at least 7500 chronic migraine patients.

CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that migraine chronification is caused by environmental factors rather than genetic factors.