Causal relationship between telomere length and epilepsy: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

OBJECTIVE: Observational studies have suggested a link between telomere length (TL) and epilepsy, but the direction of the effect and whether it is causal or not is still being debated. The objective of this study was to investigate the causal relationship between TL and epilepsy using Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. METHODS: We performed a bidirectional two‐sample MR analysis using pooled statistics from genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) of TL and epilepsy. Additionally, we conducted a replication analysis using data from another GWAS study on epilepsy to validate our findings. The final results were analyzed using five MR methods, with the inverse‐variance weighted (IVW) method as the primary outcome. We applied methods such as radial MR, MR pleiotropy residual and outlier test and MR Steiger filters to exclude outliers. Sensitivity analyses were also conducted to assess heterogeneity and pleiotropy. RESULTS: Our analysis found no evidence of a causal relationship between epilepsy and TL (all p‐values >0.05). The sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of these results. SIGNIFICANCE: In summary, our study contradicts existing observational reports by not finding any evidence to support a causal relationship between epilepsy and TL. Further research is necessary to determine the underlying mechanism behind the association observed in observational studies.