A research team led by a UVM neurologist has found a new gene that makes people more susceptible to migraines.
Dr. Robert Shapiro, a neurologist with the UVM College of Medicine, describes the gene, CKI?, as a workhorse that turns other molecules on and off. One of the things this gene helps to control is the body’s internal clock.
In research just published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Shapiro and his team detail a family they studied in Vermont where several members had a sleep disorder known as Advance Sleep Phase Syndrome. This disorder basically forces people to fall asleep too early at night and wake up too early in the morning.
The family members also suffered from migraine. The researchers discovered that family members all had a mutation in CKI? (pronounced CK-1 Delta). The team later found another family with the sleep phase disorder and migraine who also had a mutation in the same gene. Additional experiments with mice confirmed their research.
CKI? is not responsible for all forms of migraine. In fact, this is a rare form, but Shapiro says the discovery is still important.
“This is the way, often, science works with respect to looking at genetics, that if you can find an unusual form of a disorder which still mimics all the features that you expect to see in the more common forms, that gives you a window into which areas seem to be not acting right, seem to be dysfunctional, which are then applied to thinking about the more general forms of the disorder.”
Migraine is often associated with headaches but Shapiro says migraine is not the same as a headache. Headaches can be one symptom among many that indicate this neurological condition. Other symptoms can include diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, vision disturbances, mood alteration and severe pain.
Shapiro notes that 60 million Americans suffer from migraine annually but says research into the condition is woefully underfunded.
“If you look at all neurological diseases—I’m talking about Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, all of them—and you ask ‘what percentage of the disability caused by neurological diseases worldwide is due to migraine?’ It’s more than half.”
He hopes this new discovery will lead to increased funding from the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.
