DNA-methylation and immunological response in medication overuse headache.

Objective: To investigate whether medication-overuse headache patients have differential DNA-methylation pattern. Methods: We collected blood samples from 120 medication-overuse headache-patients, 57 controls (29 episodic migraine patients and 28 healthy controls) in a hypothesis-generating cross-sectional case-control pilot study; 100 of the medication-overuse headache-patients were followed for six months and samples were collected at two and six months for the longitudinal methylation analyses. Blood cell proportions of leucocytes (neutrophils, NK-cells, monocytes, CD8+ and CD4+ T-cells, and B-cells) and the neutrophile-lymphocyte ratio were estimated using methylation data as a measure for immunological analysis and a cell type-specific epigenome wide association study was conducted between medication-overuse headache-patients and controls, and longitudinally for reduction in headache days/month among medication-overuse headache-patients. Results: We found a higher neutrophile-lymphocyte ratio in medication-overuse headache-patients compared to controls, indicating a higher immunological response in medication-overuse headache-patients (false discovery rate (adjusted p-value)<0.001). Reduction in headache days/month (9.8; 95% CI 8.1-11.5) was associated with lower neutrophile-lymphocyte ratio (false discovery rate adjusted p-value=0.041). Three genes (CORIN, CCKBR and CLDN9) were hypermethylated in specific cell types in medication-overuse headachepatients compared to controls. No methylation differences were associated with reduction in headache days in medication-overuse headache-patients after six months. Conclusion: This pilot study was consistent with higher immunological response in medication-overuse headachepatients which decreased with a reduction in headache days in longitudinal analysis. medication-overuse headachepatients exhibited differential methylation in innate immune cells but did not exhibit longitudinal differences with alterations in headache days. Our study creates hypotheses for further biomarker searches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]