The role of hemostatic elements in stroke has been clearly defined but several prothrombotic polymorphisms of hemostatic factors, important for other thromboembolic disorders, seem not to be very significant in stroke. Recently, the high prevalence of factor V Leiden in patients with stroke and a history of migraine has suggested an association between migraine and prothrombotic genetic risk factors. Stroke being a multifactorial disease, the aim of this study was to test whether prothrombotic tendencies increase the risk of stroke in patients with migraine. We determined the prevalence of four prothrombotic genetic risk factors (factor V R/Q 506, factor II 20210 G/A, decanucleotide insertion/deletion in the factor VII promoter, and the platelet HPA-1 alloantigen system) in 17 patients with coexisting ischemic cerebrovascular disease and migraine, 107 patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease, 106 patients with migraine, and 202 control subjects. Genotyping for all polymorphisms analyzed in our study were performed after specific genomic polymerase chain reaction, and confirmed by single-strain conformation polymorphism analysis. In the group of patients with coexisting ischemic cerebrovascular disease and migraine, the prevalence of prothrombotic genotypes (factor V Leiden, 5.8%; factor II 20210 A, 0%; factor VII A1, 70.6%; and HPA-1b, 35.3%) was similar to that obtained in all other groups. We can conclude that the studied polymorphisms do not seem to be associated with the development of ischemic cerebrovascular disease in those patients with migraine.