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Two seemingly unrelated problems might share a genetic component that may make some people more likely to suffer from both migraine and depression, Dutch researchers report.

The connection between migraine and depression has been examined before, but these researchers show that genetics may be the missing link between these two conditions.

“Migraine and depression co-occur far more frequently within subjects than to be expected by chance,” said lead researcher Dr. Gisela M. Terwindt, an assistant professor of neurology at Leiden University Medical Center. “This relationship is bidirectional; migraine patients have an increased risk to develop depression and, vice versa, depressed subjects have an increased risk of getting migraine attacks,” she said.

The report is published in the Jan. 13 online edition of Neurology.

For the report, Terwindt’s team collected data on 2,652 people who took part in the Erasmus Rucphen Family study and were all descendants of 22 couples who lived in Rucphen in the 1850s to 1900s.

Among these people, 360 suffered from migraine, 151 of them had migraine with aura, and 977 had depression. In the latter type of migraine, the headache is preceded by flashes of light. Twenty-five percent of those with migraines also suffered from depression, compared to 13 percent of those without migraines, the researchers found.

Using this data, Terwindt’s group was able to estimate the genetic contribution to both migraine and depression. They found that genetics explained 56 percent of all migraine. For migraine with aura, genetics accounted for 96 percent.

In addition, when they looked at the genetics of having both migraine and depression, the researchers found a shared genetic component, particularly for migraine with aura, Terwindt said. “Migraine patients have, at least partly, a genetic predisposition for depression,” she noted.

In the future, knowing the genetics of these conditions may lead to better treatment and possibly prevention, she said.

“Identification of common genetic factors may significantly improve the insight into the molecular basis of both migraine and depression,” Terwindt said. “This may help in the future to get more insight in the common pathophysiological process underlying both of these disabling disorders. This will, hopefully, lead to prevention of chronic migraine and development of tailored prophylactic treatments.”

Dr. Gretchen E. Tietjen, chairwoman of neurology and director of the Headache Treatment and Research Program at University of Toledo Medical Center in Ohio, said that while genetics play a part in both migraine and depression, it may well take an environmental trigger to actually produce either condition.

Tietjen recently published a series of studies that found that children who experienced abuse or neglect were more likely to suffer from migraine and depression as adults.

“Physical, emotional or sexual abuse, and physical and emotional neglect were strongly tied to depression and other conditions that are found with migraine,” she said.

Tietjen noted that stress in early life can permanently change the brain.

“Genetics is really important, and environment probably is important for turning some of these things on,” she added.

SOURCES: Gisela M. Terwindt, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands; Gretchen E. Tietjen, M.D., professor and chairwoman, neurology, and director, Headache Treatment and Research Program, University of Toledo Medical Center, Ohio

New research in mice suggests that loss of smell could serve as an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease.

People with Alzheimer’s are already known to suffer from loss of smell. But the new research pinpoints a direct link between development of amyloid plaques — the bits of gunk in the brain that cause Alzheimer’s disease — and a worsening sense of smell.

The findings are reported in the Jan. 13 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers found that the plaques first develop in the part of the mouse brain that’s devoted to the sense of smell. When tested, the mice with the plaques had to spend more time sniffing odors to remember them, and they had a hard time telling the difference between odors.

“What was striking in our study was that performance of the mouse in the olfactory behavior test was sensitive to even the smallest amount of amyloid presence in the brain as early as 3 months of age (equivalent to a young adult),” study co-author Daniel W. Wesson, of New York University School of Medicine and the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, N.Y., said in a university news release.

“This is a revealing finding because, unlike a brain scan, a laboratory-designed olfactory test may be an inexpensive alternative to early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s,” Wesson said.

SOURCE: New York University School of Medicine, news release,

War isn’t just tough on soldiers. Army wives whose husbands were deployed have higher rates of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and other mental health issues than the wives of soldiers who stayed home, a new study shows.

Researchers looked at the medical records of more than 250,000 wives, accounting for most women married to active-duty U.S. Army personnel.

Between 2003 and 2006, about 34 percent of the women’s husbands deployed for one to 11 months, 35 percent deployed for longer than 11 months, while 31 percent of soldiers were not sent overseas.

Among wives of soldiers deployed for up to 11 months, researchers found almost 3,500 more diagnoses of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and other mental health issues than among wives who husbands stayed home.

The more months a soldier was deployed, the greater the toll on his wife. Among the wives of soldiers gone for longer than 11 months during the four-year period, they found more than 5,300 additional diagnoses of mental health issues.

“The wives of soldiers who are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are experiencing greater mental health problems and have a greater need for mental health services,” said study author Alyssa Mansfield, a research epidemiologist at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., who was at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, when she conducted the research. “We also found the longer the [soldier] was deployed, the more likely the spouse was to have a mental health diagnosis.”

The study findings are published in the Jan. 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Kristin Henderson, the wife of a Navy chaplain who is serving in Afghanistan and author of While They’re At War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront, said the findings are not surprising — anxiety and sleepless nights go with the territory. Recently, a fellow military wife confided that she was taking antidepressants to cope with her husband’s deployment. “She said, ‘Oh, everyone is on Prozac here,’” Henderson said.

For the study, researchers excluded male spouses of female soldiers because their numbers are relatively small. Spouses of Reserve and National Guard, as well as those of active-duty Army personnel who had been in the military less than five years, were also not included because researchers did not have full access to medical information on them during the period before, during and after deployment. The study authors controlled for prior diagnosis of mental health issues.

Still, much remains unanswered about the stresses of war on spouses, including whether depression and other mental health issues are most likely to emerge before, during or after deployment, the authors noted.

Each phase of a deployment can cause stress that could contribute to mental health problems, Mansfield said. Before the deployment, there’s anxiety as women prepare themselves and their children for a long absence.

During deployment, women take on added responsibilities as sole caretaker for their home and children, while worrying their husband will be killed or injured. “We know from prior work that the stress surrounding deployment is not limited to the dates of deployments,” Mansfield said.

Even the homecoming, called the reintegration period, isn’t necessarily easy on the family, Henderson said. Soldiers may come home changed, perhaps because of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or injuries, but in more subtle ways, too.

Wives can also change during the time apart, becoming more independent or simply accustomed to taking care of the children alone.

“The expectations are that everything is going to be OK when he comes home, that any problems we have will be behind us,” Henderson said. “But of course, everybody is different. And the longer the deployment, the more things change.”

In a second study from the same journal, U.S. Navy and Marine Corps personnel who were given morphine immediately after sustaining combat injuries were less likely to have PTSD later on.

Of 696 patients, 243 were diagnosed with PTSD while 453 were not. About 61 percent of those who went on to develop PTSD had received morphine during resuscitation or trauma care efforts within an hour of the injury-causing event, while 76 percent of those who did not develop PTSD had been giving morphine.

“Our findings suggest that the use of morphine during trauma care may reduce the risk of subsequent development of PTSD after serious injury,” wrote the researchers from the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego.

SOURCES: Alyssa Mansfield, Ph.D., M.P.H., RTI International, Research Triangle Park, N.C.; Kristin Henderson, author, Washington, D.C.;