Genetic links between brain size and migraine risks — Queensland study

Queensland researchers have made a world-first discovery that will help bring more effective treatments for people who suffer from debilitating migraine headaches.

Queensland researchers have made a world-first breakthrough that will help bring more effective treatments for people who suffer from debilitating migraine headaches.

A study led by QIMR Berghofer researcher Dr Brittany Mitchell has shown for the first time the genetic links between brain size and migraine risk.

Around one in four Australians are affected by migraine experiencing symptoms such as

severe and prolonged headaches, nausea and vomiting, sensitivity to light and sound, and

brain fog.

Symptoms can last anywhere from a few hours to weeks and even months and women are twice as likely to be affected.

Aside from the distressing impact on patients, migraine costs the Australian economy more

than $35 billion every year, but there are still many unknowns about the biological causes of

the complex condition with around half of all patients failing to respond to treatment.

“Our research found that a smaller brain size and smaller structures within the brain, such as

the hippocampus and the amygdala, cause an increased risk of migraine, and that this might

be due to shared biological pathways that affect neuronal signalling or the regulation of blood

flow,” Dr Mitchell said.

“Migraine is a difficult disorder to treat so it’s very exciting that our research has delivered a

better understanding of the biology of migraine which we hope will lead to more effective

treatments,” she said.

“I know personally how debilitating migraines are because I suffer from them myself. Any

step towards bringing relief to patients is always very exciting and positive.”

The research, which has been published in the journal Brain, was made possible thanks to genetic data resulting from hundreds of thousands of participants from two multinational research collaborations - the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium and the International Headache Genetics Consortium (IHGC).

Co-author of the study, Professor Dale Nyholt from the QUT Centre for Genomics and

Personalised Health is a world authority on the genetics of migraine and a leader of the

IHGC. He said identifying these new findings about the causal genetic links of migraine leads to new avenues for research.

QIMR Berghofer genetic epidemiologist and study co-author, Dr Miguel Rentería, said the

next step would be to further investigate the uncovered genes that are shared between brain

structure and migraine risk and to also investigate if these genes are responsible for the

differences in migraine risk between women and men.

“For the first time we can see that some of the genes that influence brain size can also

increase migraine risk, and that this is in turn likely due to vascular regulation. We now want

to study these shared genetic pathways to work out whether increasing blood flow, for

example, could reduce migraine risk thereby opening up new possibilities for treatments,” Dr

Rentería said.

Originally published as Genetic links between brain size and migraine risks — Queensland study