Sha-Sha Tao,1– 3,* Fan Cao,4,* Ruo-Di Zhang,1,2,* Shu-Zhen Xu,1,2 Xiao-Xiao Li,1,2 Jian Tang,1,2 Xiao-Ke Yang,5 Hai-Feng Pan1,2 

1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, People’s Republic of China; 2Inflammation and Immune Mediated Diseases Laboratory of Anhui Province, Hefei, Anhui, People’s Republic of China; 3Experimental Teaching Center for Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Ophthalmology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Hai-Feng Pan, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, People’s Republic of China, Email panhaifeng1982@sina.com; panhaifeng@ahmu.edu.cn

Background: Cytokines act a vital role in autoimmune neuroinflammatory diseases (ANDs) with undetermined causal relationships. Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was performed to estimate the causal effects of circulating levels of cytokines on the risk of ANDs.
Methods: The causal relationship between 34 circulating cytokines and 4 kinds of ANDs, including multiple sclerosis (MS), neuromyelitis optica (NOM), chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and myasthenia gravis (MG) were explored using four methods of MR analysis. MR-PRESSO, MR-Egger regression methods and Cochran’s Q statistic were utilized to identify the instrumental variables (IVs) with potential pleiotropy and heterogeneity. The Bonferroni correction was used for multiple group comparisons. P-value less than 3.68E-04 (0.05/ (34*4)) was considered statistically significant.
Results: Negative causal effects of circulating levels of interleukin (IL)-8 (OR = 0.648, 95% CI: 0.494-0.851, P = 0.002) on risk of MS, chemokine (C–C Motif) ligand (CCL)-5 (OR = 0.295, 95% CI: 0.103-0.841, P = 0.022) and stem cell growth factor-beta (SCGF-β) (OR = 0.745, 95% CI: 0.565-0.984, P = 0.038) on risk of CIDP, as well as positive causal effects of circulating levels of IL-2 receptor α (IL-2Rα) (OR = 1.216, 95% CI: 1.120-1.320, P = 3.20E-06) and chemokine C-X-C motif ligand (CXCL)-10 (OR = 1.404, 95% CI: 1.094-1.803, P = 0.008) on MS were observed. Nevertheless, only IL-2Rα still had a causal effect on MS after Bonferroni correction.
Conclusion: The results identify a genetically predicted causal effect of IL-2Rα, IL-8 and CXCL-10 on MS, CCL-5 and SCGF-β on CIDP.

Keywords: cytokines, autoimmune neuroinflammatory diseases, ANDs, causal relationship, Mendelian randomization