Why can migraines run in families?

THAT'S THE WHY:The engulfing sickness. The feeling that someone is trying to remove half your skull with a shovel. The shock and waves of nausea when someone turns on a light.

If you suffer from migraine – and yes, it’s more than just a bad headache – chances are that one or more of your relatives will know exactly what you are going through, because they have been there themselves.

Increased risk of migraine can get passed along family trees, and research is starting to unravel genetic clues behind the neurological condition.

One approach is the “genome-wide association study”, which combs through genetic information from migraineurs and compares them with “controls” who don’t get migraines to see if there are genetic variants that are linked with the condition.

Last year, such a study pinpointed a variation of a gene which is involved in how brain cells communicate through the chemical glutamate. More recent findings have now turned up another three common gene variants that are linked to migraine: PRDM16, TRPM8 and LRP1.

“By associating a variant that affects the gene LRP1 with common migraines, this confirms that the glutamate signalling pathway is involved in the development of migraines,” says Prof Aarno Palotie from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, one of the authors of the study published online recently in Nature Genetics.

“The second variant appears to affect the gene TRPM8, which is expressed in neurons and encodes a sensor for pain. The third variant has yet to be linked to any particular signalling pathway and elucidating its role should provide further knowledge of why people experience the symptoms they do with migraines.”

For more information about migraines, see migraine.ie.