Genetically predicted CXCL16 expression is associated with Parkinson’s disease risk and peripheral immune cell dysregulation: a two-sample mendelian randomization study

BACKGROUND: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder with limited disease-modifying therapies. PANoptosis, an integrated form of programmed cell death involving apoptosis, pyroptosis, and necroptosis, has been implicated in neuroinflammation-related neurodegeneration. However, the roles of PANoptosis-related genes in PD remain unclear. METHODS: We performed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) using cis-eQTL instruments from the eQTLGen Consortium for 30 PANoptosis-related genes, with PD GWAS data from Nalls et al. 2019 as the outcome. Instrumental variables were selected using a hierarchical strategy, with genome-wide significant cis-eQTLs as primary instruments and a relaxed threshold applied only for genes with fewer than three independent SNPs. Sensitivity analyses included MR-Egger, weighted median, MR-PRESSO, MR-RAPS, and leave-one-out analyses. SMR/HEIDI testing and two-step MR mediation using 731 peripheral immune traits were also performed. RESULTS: ). CASP1 and IFI27 were nominally significant and considered exploratory. Sensitivity analyses were directionally consistent, although MR-Egger estimates were imprecise. SMR/HEIDI supported CXCL16. Exploratory mediation analysis identified 63/66 candidate immune mediators after FDR correction. CONCLUSION: These findings provide MR-based genetic evidence linking CXCL16 expression to PD risk, with exploratory mediation through peripheral immune phenotypes. The CXCL16-immune cell-PD axis warrants further experimental validation.