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

BACKGROUND: Though increasing epidemiological studies have evaluated the correlation between serum calcium contents and Parkinson’s disease (PD), the results are inconsistent. At present, whether there is a causal association between serum calcium content and PD remains undetermined. OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: This study was designed to explore the relationship between increased serum calcium contents and PD risk. In this present study, a Mendelian randomization trial was carried out 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 4,238 PD patients and 4,239 controls). Here, a total of four Mendelian randomization methods comprising weighted median, inverse-variance weighted meta-analysis (IVW), MR-Egger, and MR-PRESSO were used. RESULTS: Our data concluded that genetically higher serum calcium contents were not significantly related to PD. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, we provided genetic evidence that there was no direct causal relationship between serum calcium contents and PD. Hence, calcium supplementation may not result in reduced PD risk.