A genome-wide analysis in cluster headache points to neprilysin and PACAP receptor gene variants

Background: Cluster Headache (CH) is a severe primary headache, with a poorly understood pathophysiology. Complex genetic factors are likely to play a role in CH etiology; however, no confirmed gene associations have been identified. The aim of this study is to identify genetic variants influencing risk to CH and to explore the potential pathogenic mechanisms.

Methods: We have performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in a clinically well-defined cohort of 99 Italian patients with CH and in a control sample of 360 age-matched sigarette smoking healthy individuals, using the Infinium PsychArray (Illumina), which combines common highly-informative genome-wide tag SNPs and exonic SNPs. Genotype data were used to carry out a genome-wide single marker case-control association analysis using common SNPs, and a gene-based association analysis focussing on rare protein altering variants in 745 candidate genes with a putative role in CH.

Results: Although no single variant showed statistically significant association at the genome-wide threshold, we identified an interesting suggestive association (P = 9.1 × 10⁻⁶) with a common variant of the PACAP receptor gene (ADCYAP1R1). Furthermore, gene-based analysis provided significant evidence of association (P = 2.5 × 10⁻⁵) for a rare potentially damaging missense variant in the MME gene, encoding for the membrane metallo-endopeptidase neprilysin.

Conclusions: Our study represents the first genome-wide association study of common SNPs and rare exonic variants influencing risk for CH. The most interesting results implicate ADCYAP1R1 and MME gene variants in CH susceptibility and point to a role for genes involved in pain processing. These findings provide new insights into the pathogenesis of CH that need further investigation and replication in larger CH samples.