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. 2024 Feb;14(2):e3417.
doi: 10.1002/brb3.3417.

Causal association between systemic lupus erythematosus and the risk of migraine: A Mendelian randomization study

Meixuan Ren  1 , Hangtian Yu  2 , Bing Xiao  2 , Yan Zhao  2 , Jiewei Yan  1 , Jianghong Liu  1
Affiliations

Causal association between systemic lupus erythematosus and the risk of migraine: A Mendelian randomization study

Meixuan Ren et al. Brain Behav. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies have found that patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) often have comorbid headache, especially migraine. However, the causal relationship between genetically determined SLE and migraine risk remains unclear. Therefore, we conducted a Mendelian randomization (MR) study to explore this causal association.

Methods: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) provided the instrumental variables. We selected summary data from GWAS of SLE as exposure (5201 SLE patients and 9066 controls). Both outcome GWAS data were from the Finnish Gene GWAS, including migraine with aura, migraine with aura and triptan purchases, and migraine without aura. The main MR approach was inverse-variance weighted. Pleiotropy and heterogeneity were detected using the MR pleiotropy residual sum and outlier, MR-Egger intercept test, leave-one-out analysis, and Cochran's Q test.

Results: There was a significant association between genetically predicted SLE susceptibility and increased risk of migraine with aura [odds ratio (OR) = 1.05, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02-1.08, p = .001]. The result was consistent when the outcome was migraine with aura and triptan purchases [OR = 1.05, 95% CI = 1.02-1.08, p = .001]. However, we found no association between SLE and migraine without aura. Our MR study showed no pleiotropy or heterogeneity.

Conclusions: Our study indicates that genetic susceptibility to SLE increases the incidence of migraine with aura but not migraine without aura. It is necessary for the routine evaluation and early recognition of migraine in patients with SLE in clinical settings.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization; migraine with aura; migraine without aura; risk; single nucleotide polymorphisms; systemic lupus erythematosus.

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Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest among all authors.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
An overview of the design of our Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. Dashed lines indicate causal associations that would go against the assumptions of MR. SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus; SNP, single nucleotide polymorphism.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The flowchart of our Mendelian randomization (MR) study. LD, linkage disequilibrium; SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus; SNP, single nucleotide polymorphism.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The results of the association between systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and migraine risk.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
(a) Scatter plot of the causal effect of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) on the risk of migraine with aura; (b) scatter plot of the causal effect of SLE on the risk of migraine with aura and triptan purchases. SNP, single nucleotide polymorphism.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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