Heritability of migraine as a function of definition

Abstract

The objective was to examine the main genetic and environmental architecture of migraine in the Screening Across Lifetime of Twin (SALT) Study as a function of definition. We performed a quantitative genetic study of the Swedish population and a total of 12,095 twin pairs aged 41–64 years were interviewed on the telephone by trained lay personnel using a structured questionnaire. Lifetime assessment of recurrent headache and two measures of migraine were obtained, diagnosis in line with the 1988 International Headache Society criteria and self-report. The lifetime prevalence was 10.3% for diagnosed and 21.4% for self-reported migraine. Among diagnosed cases 82.3% self-reported migraine. Among self-ascertained cases, 60.3% did not fulfil diagnostic criteria, and one third had not had recurrent headache. In multivariate analyses, genetic influences were common to diagnosed and self-reported migraine (42%) and specific to self-report migraine (11%). In univariate analyses, heritability was stable (52%) when “false positives” were removed from the case definition (diagnosed or self-reported migraine) and decreased the prevalence from 23 to 16% but dropped (from 52 to 38%) when “false negatives” were removed and decreased the prevalence from 23 to 17%. A relationship between the definition and the heritability of migraine was demonstrated and phenotypes of clinical and aetiologic relevance were disclosed.

Development and validation of the Asian Migraine Criteria (AMC)

“…The presence or absence of clinical characteristics of migraine headache in our patients, including unilateral location, throbbing quality, association of headache with nausea or vomiting, photophobia or sonophobia, osmophobia, presence of aura, family history of migraine, aggravation of headache attacks during the menstrual period and typical demographics, were recorded by the headache specialists. 6 The likelihood ratio (LR) of these clinical migraine characteristics was analyzed in pediatric and adult groups of headache patients. 5 Patients younger than 15 years were categorized as pediatric.…”

Chronic Widespread Pain and Its Comorbidities

“…Subjects who endorsed any of these items about pain (ie, possible rheumatoid arthritis, prolonged joint pain, and osteoarthritis) were considered to have joint pain. Migraine and tension-type headache were assessed for subjects younger than 65 years with an algorithm 13 in line with the International Headache Society criteria.…”

Linkage and heritability analysis of migraine symptom groupings: a comparison of three different clustering methods on twin data

“…Numerous researchers have shown that there is a significant genetic component to risk of this disorder (Ziegler et al 1998;Mulder et al 2003;Svensson et al 2003Svensson et al , 2004Nyholt et al 2004Nyholt et al , 2005, with estimates of heritability ranging between 34 and 57% in twin-cohort studies across six countries (Mulder et al 2003). The diagnosis of migraine is found to be difficult due to lack of biological markers and overlap with other types of neurological disorders, such as tension type headache and brain tumour.…”