• Zhijun Xie, Zhe Chen, Yuhong Jiang, Jiaqi Yao, Pengcheng Zhang, Hang Lei, and Wenfu Tang.
• Department of Spleen and Stomach Diseases, The Affiliated Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, Sichuan, China.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2024 Nov 1; 103 (44): e40090e40090.

AbstractTo examine the causal bidirectional relationships between epilepsy and microstructural changes in the white matter (WM). A genome-wide association study meta-analysis of the International League Against Epilepsy Consortium on Epilepsy and 360 WM imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs) from the UK Biobank was used for the analysis. Genetic correlation analyses were conducted based on summary statistics of various "IDP-epilepsy" pairs for 2-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to explore the causal relationships. We used the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method as the primary MR analysis approach, and conducted sensitivity analyses for pleiotropy and heterogeneity. Forward MR analysis revealed that alterations in the 16 WM IDPs increased the risk of epilepsy (q value < 0.05). Changes in the 38 WM IDPs were associated with a decreased risk of epilepsy (q value < 0.05). In the reverse analysis, seizures from all epilepsy types changed 5 WM IDPs, whereas seizures from juvenile myoclonic epilepsy altered 11 WM IDPs (q value < 0.05). This study revealed causal associations between changes in the WM microstructure and epilepsy subtypes. These findings offer new directions for early prevention and treatment of epilepsy.Copyright © 2024 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

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