A Study Of White Matter Network In Migraines With Different COMT Genotypes

Migraine is a very common recurrent chronic neurological disease, it is often accompanied by photophobia, nausea, vomiting, heart rate and other symptoms. In Asian populations, the incidence of migraine up to 8.4% ~ 12.7%, and a single episode duration is generally 4 ~ 72 h,which brings a lot of trouble to people’s learning, working and lives, and have serious impact on individuals and families happy life. Therefore, it has important practical significance to study the pathogenesis of migraine.At present,the study of human brain connecttome combined with genetic analysis group has found that different genotypes may lead to differences in brain structure and function of the network.Therefore,we speculate that the different physiological mechanisms of COMT gene in patients with migraine may be related to the brain’s network mode.In order to verify the above speculation, 111 healthy subjects and 136 migraine patients were divided into two groups according to COMT Val158 Met genotype respectively,based on T1 structural image and functional magnetic resonance image, using voxel-based morphometry method and functional connectivity analysis method, we assessed the affects of COMT genetic variations for patients with migraine on brain structural and functional network, thus investigated the possible interactions between COMT and the disease in the structural network for migraine without aura patients and healthy subjects, further, for carrying the Met migraine patients, using the fiber bundle tracking technology and functional connectivity analysis, as well as the complex network theory to explore the potential abnormal connections within the brain structural network of migraines and examine the coupling of the structural connectivity and functional connectivity. The main results of this paper are as follows:1. We founds the interactions are in the hippocampus region between migraine disease and gene, and Val/Val migraine sufferers show significantly reduced gray matter density compared with the Val/Val healthy subjects.2. Selected hippocampal brain regions as a seed region, we conducted the functional connectivity analysis. The results showed that, compared with patients with carrying Met, the the hippocampus-medial prefrontal functional connectivity of Val/Val migraine significantly decreased;3. For Met carriers, we analysis the structural network properties. The results exit that the network topology of the structural network significantly changed in the migraine compared with healthy subjects, and the coupling of structural functional connectivity also changed.In summary, the brain network of migraine patients with different genotypes present morphological differences, which to some extent, providing radiological evidence for understanding the pathogenesis of migraines who have a family history.