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PARIS: Gene detectives announced they had found the first inherited link to common types of migraine, a finding that boosts hopes for new drugs to curb this painful and costly disorder.
Scientists from 40 medical centres pored over the genetic profiles of more than 50,000 people, comparing those who suffered badly from migraines with others who were otherwise healthy.
What came up in the net was a tiny but telltale variant of DNA that boosts the risk of getting migraines by around fifth.
Study first to unlock mystery
"This is the first time we have been able to peer into the genomes of many thousands of people and find genetic clues to understand common migraine," said Aarno Palotie, head of the International Headache Genetics Consortium at Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, which led the study.
Previous research has found links for some extreme, but mercifully rare, forms of migraine, but this is the first to pinpoint an association for common types of the disease.
The tiny genetic variant, or allele, is called rs1835740.
Discovering what unleashes a migraine
Lying on Chromosome 8 between two genes, PGCP and MTDH/AEG-1, it allows a messenger chemical called glutamate to accumulate in junctions between brain cells, and this unleashes the migraine, the scientists believe.
If so, drug engineers have a tempting target in preventing glutamate buildup, they hope.
The paper, published online in Nature Genetics, cited figures that migraine affects 17% of European women and 8% of men.
Cost of migraines on par with diabetes
The U.N.'s World Health Organisation (WHO) ranks migraine in the top 20 diseases in terms of "years lived with disability," a benchmark of handicap.
A U.S. estimate put migraine's economic cost on a par with diabetes.
The study first compared the genome of more than 3,000 migraine sufferers in Finland, Germany and the Netherlands against that of some 10,000 non-sufferers.
