The Inheritance of Allergy with Special Reference to Migraine.

For some years during the course of treatment of different forms of allergy a t the BALYEAT HAY FEVER AND ASTHMA CLINIC in Oklahoma City, various facts concerning the inheritance of allergy have been noted. It is the object of the present study to determine as far as possible from the material thus collected the type of inheritance displayed by that form of allergy called migraine. The study was made entirely from a genetic point of view and the material used began with the available records of patients of the BALYEAT HAY FEVER AND ASTHMA CLINIC. Studies on the heredity of allergy are not numerous. Work seems to have begun about 1909 with DRINKWATER’S results which indicate that asthma acts as a dominant character. Since that time a number of investigators have written on some phase of allergy. Some, though reporting on one form of allergy, have realized that various others have occurred in one family. A connection of migraine with the sex endocrines has been observed, several investigators noting that affected females suffer with migraine more frequently during the menstrual period. ADKINSON has made an extensive study of bronchial asthma (1920) and she concluded that it is a recessive character, since normal people transmit the asthmatic tendency. These normals she regarded as heterozygous. Her findings do not all bear out this conclusion, for she states that children of two heterozygous normals are three times as likely to be asthmatic as normal, whereas one fourth should be asthmatic if the character is a true recessive. She seems to have overlooked the possibility of incomplete dominance. ADKINSON found that bronchial asthma, hay fever, some urticaria, and eczema must be accepted as equivalent in their inheritance. She states that “asthma is inherited with equal frequency from the family of either parent. ” BUCHANAN in 1920 considered migraine as a recessive trait. SMITH (1922) concluded that migraine is a dominant trait, in some way sex determined. The work of STUDY, referred to by BAUR, FISCHER, LENZ, indicated that hay fever is a dominant character, manifesting itself in the older members of a family as gout, but in the younger as hay fever. GANSSLEN (1921)