Initially, migraine genome-wide association studies (GWAS) had sample sizes of up to a few thousand patients, and compared migraine with aura and without aura against controls.[van den Maagdenberg et al., 2019] GWAS conducted more recently have used increased samples sizes, with hundreds of thousands of individuals with migraine and relevant control groups.[van den Maagdenberg et al., 2019] The combined efforts of these studies have identified several locations in the genome, SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), that appear to be robustly associated with migraine.[van den Maagdenberg et al., 2019] Importantly, all associated SNPs identified to date have small effect sizes – emphasising the fact that no single genetic factor seems to cause migraine.[van den Maagdenberg et al., 2019]
Other reference used on slide:
Nyholt DR, van den Maagdenberg AMJM. Genome-wide association studies in migraine: current state and route to follow. Curr Opin Neurol 2016; 29 (3): 302–308.