THE INHERITANCE OF ALLERGY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE 



TO MIGRAINE 



MILDRED HOGE RICHARDS and RAY M. BALYEAT 



Balyeat Hay Fever and Asthma Clinic, Oklahoma City, and Department of Zoology, 

 University of Oklahoma, Norman 



For some years during the course of treatment of different forms of allergy 

 at 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 

 Clinic. 



In 1929 the writers of this paper made a preliminary genetic study of 

 twelve family pedigrees. They concluded that there is probably only one 

 gene involved in the different allergies and that the gene acts as a dominant 

 Mendelian unit, although its dominance is often incomplete, sometimes 

 skipping a generation, and that the environment is at least to some extent 

 responsible for the expression of this gene. 



In using the term "migraine" we refer to those patients who have par- 

 oxysmal headaches characterized by hemicrania (also bilateral headaches) 

 and who have symptomatic evidence of cortical involvement. There are 

 headaches due to hypersensitiveness that cannot be classified as migraine 

 since they do not have cortical features. These cases have not been used 

 in our study. It may be remarked that this restricted definition of migraine 

 makes even more striking some of the genetic situations later described, 

 in which persons who have only migraine transmit several other allergies 

 to their descendants. 



The methods used in the present work are similar to those by which 

 material was collected for our preliminary paper. Detailed questionnaires 

 to patients were employed to obtain the family histories used for our pedi- 

 grees. The questionnaires asked for specific facts concerning each member 

 of the family. When there was any doubt as to an answer, letters were 

 written about specific points, and in many cases a series of letters was sent 

 to a single individual. Since the patients treated by the clinic are of a high 



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