Association between Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Parkinson's Disease: A Mendelian Randomization Study

While much evidence suggests that type 2 diabetes mellitus increases the risk of Parkinson's disease (PD), the relationship between type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and PD is unclear. To study their association, we performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) using the following statistical methods: inverse variance weighting (IVW), MR-Egger, weight median, and weighted mode. Independent datasets with no sample overlap were retrieved from the IEU GWAS platform. All the MR methods found a lower risk of PD in T1DM (IVW-OR 0.93, 95% CI 0.91-0.96, p = 3.12 x 10-5; MR-Egger-OR 0.93, 95% CI 0.88-0.98, p = 1.45 x 10-2; weighted median-OR 0.93, 95% CI 0.89-0.98, p = 2.76 x 10-3; and weighted mode-OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.9-0.98, p = 1.58 x 10-2). The findings were then replicated with another independent GWAS dataset on T1DM (IVW-OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.95-0.99, p = 3.10 x 10-3; MR-Egger-OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.93-0.99, p = 1.08 x 10-2; weighted median-OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.94-0.99, p = 1.88 x 10-2; weighted mode-OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.94-0.99, p = 1.43 x 10-2). Thus, our study provides evidence that T1DM may have a protective effect on PD risk, though further studies are needed to clarify the underlying mechanisms.