Cathepsins and neurological diseases: a Mendelian randomization study.

Background: The causal relationship between cathepsins and neurological diseases remains uncertain. To address this, we utilized a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) approach to assess the potential causal effect of cathepsins on the development of neurological diseases. Methods: This study conducted a two-sample two-way MR study using pooled data from published genome-wide association studies to evaluate the relationship between 10 cathepsins (B, D, E, F, G, H, L2, O, S, and Z) and 7 neurological diseases, which included ischemic stroke, cerebral hemorrhage, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and epilepsy. The analysis employed various methods such as inverse variance weighting (IVW), weighted median, MR Egger regression, MR pleiotropy residual sum and outlier, Cochran Q statistic, and leave-one-out analysis. Results: We found a causal relationship between cathepsins and neurological diseases, including Cathepsin B and Parkinson's disease (IVW odds ratio (OR): 0.89, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.83, 0.95, Conclusion: Our study reveals a causal relationship between Cathepsins B, D, E, and O and neurological diseases, offering valuable insights for research aimed at improving the diagnosis and treatment of such conditions.