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Familial risks for migraine and other headaches among siblings based on hospitalizations in Sweden

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Abstract

Migraine and other headaches are common disabling conditions, reducing the quality of life in the affected individuals. The unambiguous definition of familial risk for subtypes of migraine and other headaches will advance the search for the heritable causes of these conditions and their underlying mechanisms. We aim at defining familial risks for siblings to be hospitalized because of migraine or other headaches. An ad hoc migraine database was constructed by linking the Multigeneration Register on 0- to 69-year-old siblings to the Hospital Discharge Register for data on migraines of all hospitalized patients in Sweden from years 1987 to 2001. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) were calculated for affected sibling pairs by comparison with those whose siblings had no migraine. Among a total of 14,123 hospitalized patients, 205 affected siblings were identified, with a familial SIR of 2.84. SIRs for migraine with and without aura were 3.08 and 2.67, respectively. The highest familial risk of 3.71 was noted for unspecified migraine. The risk tended to be higher for concordant (both siblings sharing the migraine subtype, ranging from 4.0 to 6.0) than discordant subtypes, but even many discordant SIRs were significant. The SIR for spouse correlation was 1.14 for husbands and 1.22 for wives, far from being significant. All subtypes of hospitalized migraines and other headaches show an increased familial risk, at least in specific age groups. The different subtypes appear to share susceptibility, which may imply common disease mechanisms.

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Acknowledgements

The registers used in the present study are maintained at Statistics Sweden and the National Board of Health and Welfare. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant R01-H271084-1), the Swedish Research Council (grant K2001-27X-11651-06C), and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (grant 2001-2373).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Molecular Genetic Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 580, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany

    Kari Hemminki

  2. Department of Biosciences at Novum, Karolinska Institute, 141 57, Huddinge, Sweden

    Kari Hemminki

  3. Department of Family Medicine Stockholm, Karolinska Institute, Alfred Nobels alle 12, 141 83, Huddinge, Sweden

    Xinjun Li, Sven-Erik Johansson, Kristina Sundquist & Jan Sundquist

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  1. Kari Hemminki
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  2. Xinjun Li
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  4. Kristina Sundquist
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  5. Jan Sundquist
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Correspondence to Kari Hemminki.

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Hemminki, K., Li, X., Johansson, SE. et al. Familial risks for migraine and other headaches among siblings based on hospitalizations in Sweden. Neurogenetics 6, 217–224 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10048-005-0019-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10048-005-0019-8

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