Recurrent headache and migraine heritability: Twin study

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine recurrent headache (migraine and non-migraine) heritability, among the twin pairs. Headache hritability was investigated among 396 twin pairs (42.4% monozygotic and 57.6% dizygotic) aged 3 to 21 years, on north part territory of Serbia-Vojvodina, during the 20 years period. Within the group of tested twin persons, 30.2% had recurrent headaches, 9.2% migraine headache and 21% other recurrent non-migraine headaches. Heritability quotient of all recurrent headaches was 0.3882. For non- migraine headaches heritability quotient of 0.2286 confirmed that the external factors influence is higher than heritability. Migraine headache heritability quotient 0.8598 clearly proved the heritability of the migraine headache. Both, correlation and determination quotient of the migraine headache of all the twins (r12 0.7498; r21256.12%), monozygotic (r120.8458; r1271.54%) and dizygotic (r120.6342; r21240.22%), show high degree of migraine headache twin siblings dependence, and higher correlation and significance of the difference with monozygotic twins.