AUTHOR=Wang Yanchao , Gao Luyan , Lang Wenjing , Li He , Cui Pan , Zhang Nan , Jiang Wei 

TITLE=Serum Calcium Levels and Parkinson’s Disease: A Mendelian Randomization Study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.00824

DOI=10.3389/fgene.2020.00824

ISSN=1664-8021

ABSTRACT=Background: Previous epidemiological studies evaluated the relationship between serum calcium content and Parkinson’s disease (PD), while the results demonstrated by these studies were often inconsistent. At present, whether there is a causal relationship between serum calcium content and PD is still not clear. 
Objective and Methods: Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore the relationship between increased serum calcium content and PD risk. In this present study, a Mendelian randomization trial was carried out by using a large-scale serum calcium genome-wide association study (GWAS) dataset (N=61,079, Europeans) and a large-scale PD GWAS dataset (N=8,477, Europeans including 4238 PD patients and 4239 controls). Here, a total of four Mendelian randomization methods including weighted median, inverse-variance weighted meta-analysis (IVW), MR-Egger, and MR-PRESSO were used. 
Results: Our data together indicated that increased serum calcium content could be not significantly related to PD. 
Conclusions: In conclusion, we provided genetic evidence that there was not direct causal relationship between serum calcium levels and PD. Hence, calcium supplementation might not contribute to reduce PD risk.