Systematic evaluation of multifactorial causal associations for Alzheimer’s disease and an interactive platform based on Mendelian randomization analysis — MRAD

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Traditional epidemiological studies have reported several risk factors for AD. However, most epidemiological studies are insufficient to draw definitive conclusions on causal association due to the potential for reverse causality and confounding bias. Therefore, elucidating its pathogenesis remains challenging. Mendelian randomization (MR) was developed for assessing causality using genetic variants as a new approach in epidemiological research. In this study, we used MR analysis to investigate potential AD risk factors to support extensive AD research. We used the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) model as the major analysis method to perform hypothesis-free Mendelian randomization analysis on the data from MRC IEU OpenGWAS (18,097 exposure traits and 16 AD outcome traits), and conducted sensitivity analysis with six models, to assess the robustness of the IVW results, to identify various classes of risk or protective factors for AD, early-onset AD, and late-onset AD. We generated 400,274 data entries in total, among which the major analysis method of IVW model consists of 73,129 records with 4840 exposure traits, which fall into 10 categories: Disease (n=17,168), Medical laboratory science (n=15,416), Imaging (n=4,896), Anthropometric (n=4,478), Treatment (n=4,546), Molecular trait (n=17,757), Gut microbiota (n=48), Past history (n=668), Family history (n=1,114), and Lifestyle trait (n=7,038). For the convenience of display and operation, an online platform called MRAD has been developed using the Shiny package with MR analysis results. MRAD can be freely accessed online at https://gwasmrad.com/mrad/. Moreover, novel potential AD therapeutic targets (CD33, TBCA, VPS29, GNAI3, PSME1) are identified, among which CD33 was positively associated with the main outcome traits of AD, as well as with both EOAD and LOAD. TBCA and VPS29 were negatively associated with the main outcome traits of AD, as well as with both EOAD and LOAD. GNAI3 and PSME1 were negatively associated with the main outcome traits of AD, as well as with LOAD, but had no significant causal association with EOAD. This is one of the first and largest studies in this field. The findings of our research advance understanding of the etiology of AD.