Post-Traumatic Headache in Children and Genetic Risk of Migraine

Background and Objectives: To examine the association between genetic risk of migraine and post-traumatic headache (PTH) in children. Methods: This is a secondary analysis of a cohort study that recruited children aged 8-17 years within 48 hours of concussion or orthopedic injury (OI) from 5 pediatric emergency departments and followed them for 6 months. Genetic risk of migraine was estimated through (1) family history of migraine, (2) polygenic risk scores (PRSs), and (3) forty individual single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). PTH was categorized as: no PTH (no PTH), PTH nonmigraine phenotype (PTH-NM), or PTH migraine phenotype. Ordinal regression models with cluster-adjusted standard errors and restricted cubic splines were used to estimate associations between genetic risk of migraine and increasing severity of PTH (no PTH vs PTH-NM vs PTH migraine phenotype), adjusting for injury type (concussion vs OI), age, sex, time since injury, first principal component, deprivation indices, concussion history, and preinjury headache history. Results: < 0.001) and 2 remained significant after Bonferroni correction (rs13078967 and rs75002882). Discussion: Four migraine susceptibility genetic variants were associated with PTH, as was family history of migraine in some models, but a migraine PRS was not.