Association between dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and liver cancer: A Mendelian randomization analysis

Background Epidemiological studies have indicated an inverse association between neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. However, the relationship between liver cancer and dementia, particularly Alzheimer's disease (AD), remains underexplored. Objective This study aimed to determine the association between dementia, specifically AD, and liver cancer using Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. Methods We conducted a bidirectional, two-sample MR analysis using publicly available genome-wide association studies data. The inverse-variance weighted method was employed as the primary analytical approach. To detect and correct for the effects of horizontal pleiotropy, we applied three complementary methods: MR Egger, weighted median, and Maximum likelihood. Results The analysis indicated significant associations between dementia and a reduced risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (OR: 0.87; 95%CI: 0.81–0.95; p