BERLIN: Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have discovered the reason behind migraines leaving you breathless for hours at a stretch.
The cause is a genetic variant, which helped humans thousands of years ago, to adapt to cold weather in northern climates.
According to Felix Key of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, ”In the last 25,000 years, humans have migrated to colder locales of Asia, Europe, and other parts of the world, leaving behind the warm climate of Africa.
“This colonisation could have been accompanied by genetic adaptations that helped early humans respond to cold temperatures” said Aida Andres, who supervised the study.
To find evidence of this adaptation, researchers took a closer look at TRPM8, a gene that codes for the only known receptor that enables a person to detect and respond to cool and cold temperatures.
They discovered that a genetic variant upstream from the gene, which may regulate it, became increasingly common in populations living in higher latitudes during the last 25,000 years.
”Only five per cent of people with Nigerian ancestry carry the variant, compared to 88 per cent of people with Finnish ancestry. Currently, the percentage of people in a population that carry the variant increases at higher latitudes and with colder climates, revealed the study, published in the recent edition of PLOS Genetics.
”Migraine is a debilitating neurological disorder that affects millions worldwide. The percentage of people who suffer from the disorder varies across human populations, but is highest in individuals of European descent, which is also the population with the highest frequency of the cold-adaptive variant.
The researchers said the adaptation to cold temperatures in early human populations may have contributed, to some extent, to the variation in migraine prevalence that exists among human groups today.
“The study nicely shows how past evolutionary pressures can influence present-day phenotypes,” Science Daily quoted Mr Key as saying. (AGENCIES)
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