Vitamin D receptor genetic variants and Parkinson's disease in a Taiwanese population

Abstract Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have hypovitaminosis D status and genetic variants of vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene are recently shown to be associated with PD in a large-scale genome-wide association study in a Caucasian population. Few studies examined VDR genetic variants in large-scale Asian patients with PD. We therefore genotyped 6 VDR genetic variants in a total of 1492 Taiwanese subjects, including 700 patients with PD and 792 age and/or gender matched control subjects. We did not observe any significant associations between the studied genetic variants of VDR and the risk of PD. Our data suggest that genetic variations of the VDR gene did not play a major role in a Taiwanese PD population. Further studies of VDR and its interaction with serum vitamin D levels are warranted to clarify the potential role of vitamin D in PD pathogenesis.