Exploring causal correlations between systemic inflammatory cytokines and epilepsy: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

Background Inflammation plays a role in the development and advancement of epilepsy, but the relationship between inflammatory cytokines and epilepsy is still not well understood. Herein, we use two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) to examine the causal association between systemic inflammatory cytokines and epilepsy. Methods We conducted a bidirectional two-sample MR analysis based on genome-wide association study data of 41 serum cytokines from 8,293 Finnish individuals with various epilepsy subtypes from the International League against Epilepsy Consortium. Results Our study showed that three inflammatory cytokines were associated with epilepsy, five were associated with generalized epilepsy, four were associated with focal epilepsy, one was associated with focal epilepsy-documented lesion negative, three were associated with juvenile absence epilepsy, one was associated with childhood absence epilepsy, two were associated with focal epilepsy-documented lesion other than hippocampal sclerosis, and two were associated with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. Furthermore, the expression of systemic inflammatory cytokines was unaffected by genetically predicted epilepsy. Conclusion This study suggested that several inflammatory cytokines are probably the factors correlated with epilepsy. Additional research is required to ascertain if these biomarkers have therapeutic potential to prevent or manage epilepsy.