• Markus Schürks, Antje Frahnow, Hans-Christoph Diener, Tobias Kurth, Dieter Rosskopf, and Hans-Jörgen Grabe.
• Department of Neurology, University Hospital Essen, Hufelandstrasse 55, 45122 Essen, Germany. markus.schuerks@uni-due.de.
• J Headache Pain. 2014 Jul 21; 15: 46.

BackgroundTriptans are only effective in terminating cluster headache (CH) attacks in 70-80% of patients. Pharmacogenetic aspects of the serotonin metabolism, specifically variation in the 5-HTTLPR may be involved.MethodsGenetic association study in a well-defined cohort of 148 CH patients with information on drug response to triptans. CH was diagnosed according to the criteria of the International Headache Society. Genotypes of the 43-bp insdel (rs4795541) and A > G (rs25531) polymorphisms in the 5-HTTLPR promoter region were detected by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. We used logistic regression analysis to investigate the association between bi-allelic and tri-allelic genotypes and triptan non-response with genotype models.ResultsMean age at study entry among patients was 44.6 ± 10.5 years, 77.7% were men. The genotype distribution both for the bi-allelic and the tri-allelic polymorphism was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. We did not find an association of the bi-allelic polymorphism with triptan non-response. While the effect estimates for the S variant of the tri-allelic polymorphisms suggested increased odds of triptan non-response in CH patients (multivariable-adjusted odds ratio [95% confidence interval]: L*L* genotype-reference; L*S* genotype-1.33 [0.53-3.32]; S*S* genotype-1.46 [0.54-3.98]), the results were not statistically significant.ConclusionsData from our study do not indicate a role of bi-allelic and tri-allelic genotypes of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism in triptan non-response in CH.

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