Prothrombotic genetic risk factors in patients with coexisting migraine and ischemic cerebrovascular disease

The role of hemostatic elements in stroke has been clearly defined but seve ral prothrombotic polymorphisms of hemostatic factors, important for other thromboembolic disorders, seem not to be very significant in stroke. Recent ly, the high prevalence of factor V Leiden in patients with stroke and a hi story of migraine has suggested an association between migraine and prothro mbotic genetic risk factors. Stroke being a multifactorial disease, the aim of this study was to test whether prothrombotic tendencies increase the ri sk of stroke in patients with migraine. We determined the prevalence of four prothrombotic genetic risk factors (fa ctor V R/Q 506, factor II 20210 G/A, decanucleotide insertion/deletion in t he factor VII promoter, and the platelet HPA-1 alloantigen system) in 17 pa tients with coexisting ischemic cerebrovascular disease and migraine, 107 p atients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease, 106 patients with migraine, and 202 control subjects. Genotyping for all polymorphisms analyzed in our study were performed after specific genomic polymerase chain reaction, and confirmed by single-strain conformation polymorphism analysis. In the group of patients with coexisting ischemic cerebrovascular disease a nd migraine, the prevalence of prothrombotic genotypes (factor V Leiden, 5. 8%; factor II: 20210 A, 0%; factor VII A1, 70.6%; and HPA-1b, 35.3%) was si milar to that obtained in all other groups. We can conclude that the studie d polymorphisms do not seem to be associated with the development of ischem ic cerebrovascular disease in those patients with migraine.