rs2651899 variant is associated with risk for migraine without aura from North Indian population

Recently a GWAS study had identified 38 genomic variants commonly found in humans that influence migraine risk. For further replicate these findings, we selected two SNPs; rs2651899 on chromosome 1p36.32 in PRDM16 gene and rs10166942 on chromosome 2q37.1 close to TRPM8 gene for their associations with migraine in the North Indian population as much work has not been done on these variants before from this population. In this case-control association study, 300 unrelated subjects, including 150 migraineurs (43 migraine with aura and 107 migraine without aura) and 150 healthy controls were selected to collect genomic DNA. Polymerase chain reaction and restriction-fragment-length polymorphism methods were performed for genotyping of these variants. Univariate and multivariate analyses were done to find the association of different genotypes and alleles of these SNPs with migraine and its subgroups. We found a statistically significant difference in migraineurs with control for PRDM16 rs2651899 polymorphism at genotypic (p<0.05), allelic (p=0.022; OR 1.462; 95% CI 1.058-2.022) and for dominant model (p=0.011; OR 1.957; 95% CI 1.169-3.276). A similar trend was observed both on subgroup and gender analysis in migraine without aura (MO) and females respectively for rs2651899 variant. For the other SNP (rs10166942), statistically non-significant differences were reported in the allelic/genotypic frequencies between migraineurs and controls as p>0.05. However, on subgroup analysis we found statistically significant differences at genotypic (p<0.05) and dominant models in migraine with aura (MA) and in males with that of entire controls. But no significant association was found at allelic level in both subgroup and gender analysis for rs10166942. This research study showed that rs2651899 is a potential genetic marker for migraine susceptibility in MO and female subgroup at both genotypic and allelic level in the North Indian population and found that rs10166942 variant may be a potential marker for MA and male subgroup. Further work with large sample size is required for these SNPs to understand their functional mechanisms and to strengthen our results.