The role go genetic factors that cause thrombosis in migraine patients with hyperintense focus on brain magnetic resonance i̇maging

Migraine is one of the most common neurologic disorders worldwide.Subclinical hyperintense brain lesions on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)are more common in migraine and stroke compared to normal population. Also,migraine alone, is accepted as a risk factor for ischemic stroke. The studies aboutassociation of migraine and prothrombotic genetic factors have conflicting resultswhich were thought to be due to possible ethnical diversity. In this study, Factor VLeiden mutation, prothrombine G20210A, mehylentetrahydrofolate reductase geneC677T mutation and angiotensine converting enzyme (ACE) gene I/D(insertion/deletion) polymorphism frequencies and the association of these factorswith subclinical hyperintense lesions on brain MRI were studied in migraine patients.Our purpose was to evaluate the association between prothrombotic genetic factorsand subclinical hyperintense lesion formation on brain MRI and to compare migrainepatients with normal controls and to clarify the common pathogenesis of migraineand stroke by using the relationship which could be found in this study.A total of 160 patients was previously diagnosed as migraine who has MRIevaluation were involved in this study. After obtaining written informedconsent from all participants, venous blood sample was collected from eachsubject into tubes containing EDTA. Isolated genomic DNA was used to evaluategene mutations and the relevant polymorphism which were mentioned above.Obtained results were compared with the results of normal Turkish populationstudies.In terms of ACE gene polymorhpism, there was a statistically significanthigher frequency of D/D genotype in migraine group compared to controls(p=.0001). The group with hyperintense lesions on MRI had statistically significant(p=.02) higher I/D genotype than the group with no MRI lesions. However the othergene mutations did not differ significantly between patients with migraine andcontrols, between migraine patients with aura and without aura and according to thehypeintense lesion or no lesion on MRI.In conclusion, in this study we found that ACE D/D polymorpism is a riskfactor for migraine and ACE I/D polymorphism is a risk factor for brain MRIhyperintense lesion formation in migraine patients. Further prospective studies withmore ethnical diversity and larger sample size maybe useful to investigate the effectof ACE I/D polymorphism on comorbidity of migraine and stroke.