AN INTERNATIONAL research effort has identified the first gene associated with migraine.
The researchers also believe their data may show a link between migraine and a specific chemical that controls signalling in the brain.
Scientists have spent years searching for the genetic causes of migraine, a disorder that can trigger seriously debilitating headaches and other symptoms.
The condition is widespread and affects between 12 and 15 per cent of the population here, up to half a million people, according to the Migraine Association of Ireland. It has a strong genetic component given there is an 80 per cent chance of having migraine if both your parents have it and a 60 per cent chance if one parent has it.
Those with migraine are often forced to stay at home during an attack, with suffers typically losing between 1.5 and 4.5 working days a year. The disorder costs Irish business an estimated €252 million a year, the association said.
Dr Aarno Palotie of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Cambridge University and colleagues at other centres across Europe began a huge search for genes associated with migraine.
After a search involving more than 56,000 people, the researchers identified a marker they called rs1835740 as a likely candidate. “To our knowledge, our data establish rs1835740 as the first genetic risk factor for migraine,” the authors report this morning in Nature Genetics.