People who suffer from migraine headaches appear to express more genes that produce platelets, the specialized components in blood that are involved in clotting, researchers report.

This finding could lead to “future identification of migraine sub-types that would be able to be identified by a blood test,” Dr. Andrew D. Hershey told AMN Health. “This may evolve into individualized treatment based on the gene expression.”

Hershey, at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, and his colleagues note in the medical journal Headache that migraine has a strong genetic component.

To see if genetic profiling might shed more light on the matter, the researchers examined blood cell samples from 22 patients with migraine and a comparison group of 56 “controls” - healthy volunteers as well as patients with various neurological and psychiatric diseases.

A group of platelet genes was “upregulated” - expressed at a higher level than normal - in the migraine group, and different expression patterns were seen in people who had occasional migraine and those with chronic migraine.

Compared with controls, 40 genes were upregulated in migraine and 353 were upregulated in chronic migraine.

The platelet gene finding, say the researchers, indicates that occasional and chronic migraine has similar but overlapping causes.

“The biggest implication of the study,” added Hershey, “is a new way to uncover the underlying (cause) of this poly-genetic disorder.”

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SOURCE: Headache, December 2004.