Association between brain structures and migraine: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

Xiaoming Guo; Dingkun Wang; Caidi Ying; Yuan Hong

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1148458

Association between brain structures and migraine: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

Front Neurosci. 2023 Mar 3:17:1148458. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1148458. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xiaoming Guo^{1

2}, Dingkun Wang², Caidi Ying¹, Yuan Hong¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurosurgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
² Department of Neurosurgery, Tongde Hospital of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Background: Accumulating evidence of clinical and neuroimaging studies indicated that migraine is related to brain structural alterations. However, it is still not clear whether the associations of brain structural alterations with migraine are likely to be causal, or could be explained by reverse causality confounding.

Methods: We carried on a bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis in order to identify the causal relationship between brain structures and migraine risk. Summary-level data and independent variants used as instruments came from large genome-wide association studies of total surface area and average thickness of cortex (33,992 participants), gray matter volume (8,428 participants), white matter hyperintensities (50,970 participants), hippocampal volume (33,536 participants), and migraine (102,084 cases and 771,257 controls).

Results: We identified suggestive associations of the decreased surface area (OR = 0.85; 95% CI, 0.75-0.96; P = 0.007), and decreased hippocampal volume (OR = 0.74; 95% CI, 0.55-1.00; P = 0.047) with higher migraine risk. We did not find any significant association of gray matter volume, cortical thickness, or white matter hyperintensities with migraine. No evidence supporting the significant association was found in the reverse MR analysis.

Conclusion: We provided suggestive evidence that surface area and hippocampal volume are causally associated with migraine risk.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization; NeuroImage; brain structure; cortex; migraine.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81870964) and Zhejiang Province Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Project (2023ZR075).