Genetic Testing May Help with Rare, Severe Migraines

According to researchers from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, patients who suffer from an extremely severe form of migraine, one in which one side of the body becomes very weak, might benefit from undergoing genetic testing. Their research has shown that there are familial genes for this one type of migraine in patients who do not have any family members who also experience migraines.

They feel that their results will have many important clinical implications because many of the patients who have this type of migraine are actually misdiagnosed and therefore, do not receive the right treatments. If they can understand the genetic cause for this type of migraine, it should be able to help the clinicians when it comes to both the diagnosis and treatments. Some of the conditions that the patients are diagnosed with are epilepsy, stroke or other similar disorders and of course, they are treated for those conditions with medications that do nothing to help the migraine and have serious side effects.

There were 39 participants in the study, both men and women all of whom suffer from sporadic hemiplegic migraine. This is a very rare and severe form with an aura and it is connected to a weakness that affects only one side of the body. None of the participants had any family members that they knew of who also suffer from this type of migraine. They were all screened for mutations in all three of the genes that are known to be involved in familial hemiplegic migraine, namely the CACNA1A gene, the ATPIA2 gene, and the SCN1A gene.

The results showed that 18% of the participants had at least one variant of the familial genes, with variants turning up most often in the ATPIA2 gene.

The results do indicate that it would be beneficial to test for these genes in patients with this type of sporadic migraine in order to give them proper counseling as well as avoiding any unnecessary and potentially harmful drugs.

The findings are further proof that adds on to previous evidence that familial and sporadic hemiplegic migraine as well as normal migraine have some shared gene pathways.