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. 2020 Jan 24;15(1):e0228206. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228206

Mixed evidence for the relationship between periodontitis and Alzheimer’s disease: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

Yi-Qian Sun 1,2,*, Rebecca C Richmond 3, Yue Chen 4, Xiao-Mei Mai 5
Editor: Kristel Sleegers6
PMCID: PMC6980529  PMID: 31978120

Abstract

Recent experimental studies indicated that a periodontitis-causing bacterium might be a causal factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We applied a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) approach to examine the potential causal relationship between chronic periodontitis and AD bidirectionally in the population of European ancestry. We used publicly available data of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on periodontitis and AD. Five single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were used as instrumental variables for periodontitis. For the MR analysis of periodontitis on risk of AD, the causal odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were derived from the GWAS of periodontitis (4,924 cases vs. 7,301 controls) and from the GWAS of AD (21,982 cases vs. 41,944 controls). Seven non-overlapping SNPs from another latest GWAS of periodontitis was used to validate the above association. Twenty SNPs were used as instrumental variables for AD. For the MR analysis of liability to AD on risk of periodontitis, the causal OR was derived from the GWAS of AD including 30,344 cases and 52,427 controls and from the GWAS of periodontitis consisted of 12,289 cases and 22,326 controls. We employed multiple methods of MR. Using the five SNPs as instruments of periodontitis, there was suggestive evidence of genetically predicted periodontitis being associated with a higher risk of AD (OR 1.10, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.19, P = 0.02). However, this association was not verified using the seven independent SNPs (OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.87 to 1.08, P = 0.59). There was no association of genetically predicted AD with the risk of periodontitis (OR 1.00, 95% CI 0.96 to 1.04, P = 0.85). In summary, we did not find convincing evidence to support periodontitis being a causal factor for the development of AD. There was also limited evidence to suggest genetic liability to AD being associated with the risk of periodontitis.

Introduction

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 20 loci that affect the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) [13]. However, it remains elusive which environmental factors increase the risk of late onset AD. Lower education attainment and vitamin D levels have been suggested to be causally associated with the risk of AD [46]. Recent studies showed that Porphyromonas gingivalis, a keystone pathogen in chronic periodontitis, might be a causal factor for AD [7, 8]. P. gingivalis DNA was identified in the brain of AD patients, and oral P. gingivalis infection in mice resulted in brain colonization of the bacteria and increased production of amyloid-β [7].

However, evidence of a causal link between periodontitis and AD risk is limited in humans due to issues of confounding and reverse causation in the epidemiological studies [9]. The Mendelian randomization (MR) approach attempts to overcome these limitations of observational epidemiology with the use of genetic variants that serve as instrumental variables for the exposure of interest [10, 11]. Genetic variants used as instrumental variables in an MR study may be used to infer causal effect of the exposure if they satisfy three fundamental assumptions: 1) strongly associated with the exposure; 2) independent of confounding factors of the observational association; and 3) associated with the outcome only via the exposure (no horizontal pleiotropy) [10, 11]. The increase in publicly accessible summary statistics of GWAS facilitates the application of this method. In this study, we aimed to investigate the potential causal relationship between chronic periodontitis and AD in the population of European ancestry using a bidirectional two-sample MR method.

Materials and methods

MR of chronic periodontitis on risk of AD

Summary statistics of chronic periodontitis (S1 Table) were retrieved from a meta-analysis of GWAS of periodontitis by Munz et al. including 12,225 individuals (4,924 cases vs. 7,301 controls) of European ancestry [12]. Five single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were suggestively associated with periodontitis based on P value 5×10−6 and were used as instrumental variables. Another newly published independent GWAS of periodontitis by Shungin et al. [13] was used for a validation analysis, in which eight SNPs (non-overlapping with the above-mentioned five SNPs) were suggestively (P value <5×10−6) associated with periodontitis in people with European ancestry in the GLIDE (Gene-Lifestyle Interactions in Dental Endpoints) consortium (12,289 clinically diagnosed periodontitis cases vs. 22,326 controls). Summary statistics for seven of the eight SNPs were available in the GWAS of AD, and so were included as instrumental variables for periodontitis in the validation analysis (S1 Table). In this study, instrumental SNPs in linkage disequilibrium were pruned with a clumping R2 cut-off 0.001 and the SNP with the lowest P value was retained. Summary statistics of AD were from Stage 1 of a latest GWAS by Kunkle et al. (21,982 cases vs. 41,944 controls) [2], from which the effect sizes for SNPs of periodontitis were extracted. Summary statistics of Stage 1 but not the overall analysis contain the information on these SNPs. The study by Kunkle et al. [2] is so far the largest GWAS of clinically diagnosed AD in the population of European ancestry with publicly accessible summary statistics.

MR of AD on risk of chronic periodontitis

Summary statistics of AD (S2 Table) were from the analysis of overall stages 1 and 2 in the GWAS (30,344 clinically diagnosed AD cases vs. 52,427 controls) performed by Kunkle et al. [2]. Twenty-one SNPs were associated with the risk of AD at genome-wide significance (P value 5×10−8). Summary statistics for 20 of these SNPs were available in the GWAS of periodontitis, and so were included as instrumental variables for AD in our study. Summary statistics of periodontitis were obtained from the latest and largest periodontitis GWAS by Shungin et al. [13]. We only used data of people with European ancestry by excluding those with Hispanic/Latino background in the GLIDE consortium (12,289 clinically diagnosed periodontitis cases vs. 22,326 controls) (S2 Table).

MR analysis

First, we applied MR-PRESSO (pleiotropy residual sum and outlier) to detect any horizontal pleiotropic outliers [14]. Pseudo R2 that represents proportion of variance of liability explained by SNPs and F-statistic were calculated to evaluate the strength of the instruments. For appraising causality in both directions, the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method (random effects) was used to calculate MR estimates [15], complemented with weighted median [16] and MR-Egger [17] methods that are relatively robust to horizontal pleiotropy, and with the MR-RAPS (robust adjusted profile score) method that is more robust to weak instrument bias [18]. To test for horizontal pleiotropy, we calculated the intercept and 95% confidence interval (CI) of the MR-Egger regression line [17]. We tested for heterogeneity between the causal estimates of individual SNPs using Cochran’s Q statistic for the IVW and MR-Egger methods. Leave-one-out analyses were performed to ascertain that the effect was not disproportionately influenced by a single SNP. MR estimates are reported as an odds ratio (OR) for the outcome per unit increase in ln (OR) of the exposure. We emphasize that the calculation of MR estimate associated with a binary exposure (unlike a continuous exposure) is more efficient for identifying presence of a causal effect than quantifying the magnitude of the causal effect [19]. All statistical analyses were performed in R (version 3.6.1), with packages TwoSampleMR (0.4.25), MRPRESSO (1.0) and meta (4.9–7).

Ethical approval had been obtained in the original studies [2, 12, 13].

Results

No outliers in the bidirectional MR analyses were detected with MR-PRESSO (global test P>0.19 for all). Using the five or the seven independent SNPs for periodontitis, pseudo R2 value was 0.008 vs. 0.006 and F-statistic was 19.0 vs. 31.9 respectively, which suggests relatively weak instruments for periodontitis in this study. On the contrary, using the 20 SNPs as instruments for AD, the pseudo R2 and F-statistic were 0.065 and 286.2 respectively.

The results of the bidirectional MR estimates are presented in Table 1. Using the five SNPs in the study of Munz et al. as periodontitis instruments, there was a weak association between genetically predicted periodontitis and the risk of AD (OR 1.10, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.19, P = 0.02) based on the IVW method, which was supported by the MR-RAPS method (OR 1.10, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.20, P = 0.02). The MR estimate using the weighted median method was similar but with a wider 95% CI (OR 1.08, 0.98 to 1.20). The MR-Egger estimate was less consistent though (OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.68 to 1.39). However, the validation analysis using the seven non-overlapping SNPs in the study of Shungin et al. as periodontitis instruments did not support a causal effect of genetic liability to periodontitis on the risk of AD (Table 1). Using the 20 SNPs as instruments for AD, there was no association between genetically predicted AD and the risk of periodontitis (OR 1.00, 95% CI 0.96 to 1.04, P = 0.85). (Fig 1A to 1B) displays the MR estimates derived from the IVW method summarizing the effect from each individual SNP for periodontitis on the risk of AD, whilst Fig 2 shows the MR estimate derived from the IVW method summarizing the effect from each individual SNP for AD on the risk of periodontitis. No substantial evidence for horizontal pleiotropy was observed in the MR-Egger regression analyses (periodontitis on risk of AD using the five SNPs from the study of Munz et al.: intercept 0.027, 95% CI -0.050 to 0.101, P = 0.54; periodontitis on AD using the seven SNPs from the study of Shungin et al.: intercept -0.017, 95% CI -0.052 to 0.019, P = 0.40; and AD on risk of periodontitis: intercept 0.008, 95% CI -0.005 to 0.020, P = 0.27). There was no strong evidence for heterogeneity between SNPs evaluated by Cochran’s Q statistic (P>0.31 for all). The results from leave-one-out analyses did not suggest that the effects were disproportionately influenced by a single SNP except for the effect of rs429358 on risk of periodontitis (S1A to S1C Fig). The assumption of instrumental variables (the five and the seven SNPs for periodontitis) being independent of confounding factors was supported since genome-wide significant associations with other traits than periodontitis were not found by searching in a GWAS catalogue (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/).

Table 1. Bidirectional MR estimates for the association between chronic periodontitis and Alzheimer’s disease.

Method Periodontitis on Alzheimer’s disease Alzheimer’s disease on periodontitis
Instrumental SNPs* from Munz et al. Instrumental SNPs# from Shungin et al.
OR (95% CI) P value Q statistic/
P value
OR (95% CI) P value Q statistic/
P value
OR (95% CI) P value Q statistic/
P value
IVW 1.10 (1.02, 1.19) 0.02 2.76/0.60 0.97 (0.87, 1.08) 0.59 4.13/0.66 1.00 (0.96, 1.04) 0.85 21.46/0.31
Weighted median 1.08 (0.98, 1.20) 0.13 0.99 (0.86, 1.14) 0.89 0.98 (0.94, 1.03) 0.44
MR-Egger 0.97 (0.68, 1.39) 0.89 2.27/0.52 1.05 (0.86, 1.27) 0.66 3.28/0.66 0.98 (0.93, 1.03) 0.41 20.00/0.33
MR-RAPS 1.10 (1.01, 1.20) 0.02 0.97 (0.86, 1.09) 0.60 0.99 (0.95, 1.04) 0.81

CI: confidence interval; OR: odds ratio; IVW: inverse-variance weighted; MR: Mendelian randomization; RAPS: robust adjusted profile score; SNP: single-nucleotide polymorphism

*Five/seven# SNPs were used as instrumental variables for periodontitis respectively

Twenty SNPs were used as instrumental variables for Alzheimer’s disease

Fig 1. Mendelian randomization (MR) estimates for the risk of Alzheimer’s disease associated with periodontitis.

Fig 1

(A) Using instrumental SNPs from Munz et al. for periodontitis. (B) Using instrumental SNPs from Shungin et al. for periodontitis. MR estimates were calculated using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method to summarize the effect from each individual single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in a random effects model. Odds ratio (OR) represents the risk of Alzheimer’s disease per genetically determined 1-unit increase in ln (OR) of periodontitis. 95% CI: 95% confidence interval of the odds ratio. AD: Alzheimer’s disease; IV: instrumental variable.

Fig 2. Mendelian randomization (MR) estimate for the risk of periodontitis associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Fig 2

MR estimate was calculated using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method to summarize the effect from each individual single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in a random effects model. Odds ratio (OR) represents the risk of periodontitis per genetically determined 1-unit increase in ln (OR) of Alzheimer’s disease. 95% CI: 95% confidence interval of the odds ratio. AD: Alzheimer’s disease; IV: instrumental variable.

Discussion

Chronic periodontitis and infection with P. gingivalis were associated with cognitive impairment [9]. Periodontitis at baseline was associated with an increase in cognitive decline in patients with AD after six months of follow-up [20]. More recently, two independent groups have shown that P. gingivalis and its virulence factor gingipains in the brain may play a central role in the pathogenesis of AD [7, 8]; repeated oral administration of P. gingivalis to mice resulted in neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, and formation of amyloid plaque. In our study, a weak causal effect of genetic liability to periodontitis on the risk of AD derived from the primary analysis was not validated when we used the data from another newly published GWAS of periodontitis [13]. Overall, our study did not provide convincing evidence for periodontitis being a causal factor for the development of AD in the human setting.

Although we have used the available up-to-date data, this study has several potential limitations. MR reflects an average lifetime risk, so it cannot answer the question such as if having periodontitis during a certain period has any impact on the risk of AD. While our study had a sufficient power (with narrow 95% CIs) to investigate a potential causal effect of liability of AD on the risk of periodontitis, the power might not be sufficient to detect a small effect of periodontitis on the risk of AD. Although we used the two most recent GWAS of periodontitis in the population of European ancestry [12, 13], the weak instrument bias may still be an issue as indicated by the F-statistics and R2 values. All SNPs used as instruments for periodontitis were weakly associated with periodontitis with a cut-off P value 5×10−6 instead of 5×10−8. Moreover, there was no overlapping SNPs between the two periodontitis GWAS, which further implies weak instruments for periodontitis. In addition, the biological mechanisms for most of these SNPs related to periodontitis are unclear. In two-sample MR any bias from weak instruments shifts the MR estimate towards the direction of the null [11], which may explain the unclear association between periodontitis and the AD risk we observed. It has been suggested that genetic predispositions are important for both the onset and the progression of periodontitis, and the heritability was estimated as high as 50% [21]. However, the GWAS of periodontitis up to date failed to identify consistent SNPs [12, 13, 22, 23]. The reason for divergent SNPs identified in periodontitis GWAS could be due to inconsistent definitions of periodontitis that were used in different studies. To confirm the causal effect of periodontitis on risk of AD, stronger instruments for periodontitis derived from large-scale GWAS with consistent definition of periodontitis [24] are warranted. Further MR studies using summary statistics from large GWAS of brain amyloid and tau deposition may examine the potential mechanisms between periodontitis and the risk of AD. It is also of interest to perform similar studies in other ethnic groups.

Conclusions

The present study is the first to use a two-sample MR approach to investigate the causal relationship between periodontitis and AD bidirectionally in the population of European ancestry. By employing summary statistics from the latest and largest GWAS and various MR methods, we did not find convincing evidence to support periodontitis being a causal factor for the development of AD. There was also limited evidence to suggest genetic liability to AD being associated with the risk of periodontitis. Future GWAS of periodontitis with consistent definitions for this trait are needed to investigate the genetic role in periodontitis, and the genes identified from the high-quality GWAS can be further used to explore the potential causal role of periodontitis in various diseases.

Supporting information

S1 Table. Summary statistics for Mendelian randomization analysis of potential causal effect of periodontitis on Alzheimer’s disease.

(DOCX)

S2 Table. Summary statistics for Mendelian randomization analysis of potential causal effect of Alzheimer’s disease on periodontitis.

(DOCX)

S1 Fig. Leave-one-out Mendelian randomization (MR) estimates.

(A) Periodontitis on risk of Alzheimer’s disease using instrumental SNPs from Munz et al. (B) Periodontitis on risk of Alzheimer’s disease using instrumental SNPs from Shungin et al. (C) Alzheimer’s disease on risk of periodontitis. MR estimates were calculated using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method in a random effects model after excluding each individual single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). The scale on x-axis represents ln [odds ratio (OR)] for the risk of the outcome per genetically determined 1-unit increase in ln (OR) of the exposure. The dots represent the MR estimates and the lines represent 95% confidence interval of the estimates. AD: Alzheimer’s disease; MR: Mendelian randomization.

(TIF)

S1 File. STROBE checklist.

(DOC)

S2 File. R code for the performed Mendelian randomization analyses.

(R)

S3 File. Data used in the R code.

(XLSX)

Data Availability

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding Statement

YQS’s research is supported by funding from The Norwegian Cancer Society (project ID 5769155-2015) and The Research Council of Norway “Gaveforsterkning”. RCR is a de Pass VC Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Decision Letter 0

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14 Nov 2019

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Relationship between periodontitis and Alzheimer’s disease: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

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Reviewer #1: I recommend resubmitting with major revisions. First, the thoroughness of the analysis is commendable. The use of multiple mendelian randomization (MR) estimate methods, pleiotropy outlier measurements, reverse-causality, and leave-one-out analysis provide a better understanding of the results. However, the clumping threshold of the SNPs tested should be reported. This is to minimize the impact of linkage disequilibrium.

Unfortunately, the weakest parts of the manuscript are the data used for the analysis. First, the exposure data, the GWAS of periodontitis, only included five SNPs with relatively high P value threshold (5e-6). The norm is to use P value of 5e-8 and include more SNPs. I recommend calculating and reporting the F-statistic and the R2 value, which should explain the strength of the instrument and the variance of the SNPs. It would help assert the first assumption of MR: the instrumental variance is robustly associated with the exposure. The authors somewhat address this in the discussion ("…bias from weak instruments shifts the MR estimate towards the direction of the null…") but quantifying the instrument strength would put the results into greater context.

Similarly, the small GWAS study used for the reverse causation analysis (2,681 cases and 1,823 controls) may not provide sufficient power. As such, it is unclear that the result of the reverse causation analysis is due to lack of reverse causality or from lack of statistical power. The authors should provide the appropriate statistical power calculations to address this possibility.

Lastly, the outcome data, the GWAS of Alzheimers Disease (AD), is not the latest GWAS of the given disease and does not include the latest loci associated with AD. Latest meta-analysis GWAS has found 29 loci associated with AD (Jansen et al. 2019), while this manuscript refers to only nineteen loci found in an older GWAS. The summary statistics from the latest study are publicly available. The authors should run the analyses again, both forward and reverse causation analyses, using this dataset as their AD data.

In summary, I recommend major revision of the manuscript. Clumping threshold should be reported. F-statistics and R2 of all exposure instruments, as well as the power calculation for the reverse causation analysis should be calculated and reported. Finally, additional analysis using a more up-to-date AD GWAS summary data should be done.

Reviewer #2: Summary

Mendelian randomization (MR) is a strong tool for a better understanding of potential causal effects especially in disorders with a long-term duration such as AD. However, if not done properly, MR studies are prone to misinterpretation due to the complexities involved in the analysis. In this paper, the authors have looked at the relationship between AD and periodontitis. They have used summary stats from the related GWAS studies and concluded that there is no relationship. The authors have performed extensive analysis utilizing a number of MR techniques.

Issues

- First, the analysis is not public. In order to ensure reproducibility, it is crucial to make the code or analysis notebook publicly available. Especially with computational and data analysis work, unintentional coding mistakes might be made; availability of code/notebook helps with the review and future reproducibility.

- Another major issue with the paper is not using the latest Alzheimer GWAS. In the latest study, 29 risk-loci were identified https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0311-9

- Periodontitis SNPs are limited and very strong. Using a more relaxed p-value helps, 5e-8. Better to use R^2 for choosing the instrumental variable.

- MR analysis: authors have used multiple methods; however, some details are not properly reported such as SNPs clumping threshold.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Jonggeol Jeffrey Kim

Reviewer #2: No

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Decision Letter 1

Kristel Sleegers

9 Jan 2020

PONE-D-19-17973R1

Relationship between periodontitis and Alzheimer’s disease: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sun,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. We feel that the revisions have greatly improved the merit of the manuscript, and that it now meets PLOS ONE’s publication criteria. However, one of the reviewers recommended a small revision to the title that will indeed further improve the manuscript. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript with a changed title to reflect the null or mixed evidence for the relationship between periodontitis and Alzheimers Disease.

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Feb 23 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kristel Sleegers

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I recommend resubmitting with minor revisions. I would like to thank the authors for the additional transparency, including the inclusion of F-statistics, clumping threshold, and the analysis code. While the periodontitis data, including the new data from Shungin et al., have fairly weak instrumental strength, quantifications of the instrumental strengths contextualize the mixed, and likely null, results. Additions to the Discussion and the Conclusion further contextualize and underline the limitations of the manuscript and what would be necessary for more robust future analyses. The title should echo this change and could be updated to reflect the null or mixed evidence for the relationship between periodontitis and Alzheimers Disease (AD).

I still believe that including AD GWAS with proxy cases (Janssen et al.) would be ideal but not necessary. AD has a strong heritability and the potential for introducing additional bias through the inclusion of proxy cases is minimal. However, larger GWAS size for AD will not solve the main issue of the analysis, which is the weak periodontitis data.

In summary, I recommend minor revision of the manuscript. Title should be changed to reflect the mixed/null finding of the manuscript. While not essential, I also recommend additional analysis using AD GWAS data with proxy cases.

Reviewer #2: Authors have addressed all the issues adequately. The availability of the analysis code will be helpful for future replication.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Jonggeol Jeff Kim

Reviewer #2: Yes: Faraz Faghri

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Decision Letter 2

Kristel Sleegers

10 Jan 2020

Mixed evidence for the relationship between periodontitis and Alzheimer’s disease: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

PONE-D-19-17973R2

Dear Dr. Sun,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

With kind regards,

Kristel Sleegers

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Acceptance letter

Kristel Sleegers

15 Jan 2020

PONE-D-19-17973R2

Mixed evidence for the relationship between periodontitis and Alzheimer’s disease: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

Dear Dr. Sun:

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.

With kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Kristel Sleegers

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

    Supplementary Materials

    S1 Table. Summary statistics for Mendelian randomization analysis of potential causal effect of periodontitis on Alzheimer’s disease.

    (DOCX)

    S2 Table. Summary statistics for Mendelian randomization analysis of potential causal effect of Alzheimer’s disease on periodontitis.

    (DOCX)

    S1 Fig. Leave-one-out Mendelian randomization (MR) estimates.

    (A) Periodontitis on risk of Alzheimer’s disease using instrumental SNPs from Munz et al. (B) Periodontitis on risk of Alzheimer’s disease using instrumental SNPs from Shungin et al. (C) Alzheimer’s disease on risk of periodontitis. MR estimates were calculated using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method in a random effects model after excluding each individual single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). The scale on x-axis represents ln [odds ratio (OR)] for the risk of the outcome per genetically determined 1-unit increase in ln (OR) of the exposure. The dots represent the MR estimates and the lines represent 95% confidence interval of the estimates. AD: Alzheimer’s disease; MR: Mendelian randomization.

    (TIF)

    S1 File. STROBE checklist.

    (DOC)

    S2 File. R code for the performed Mendelian randomization analyses.

    (R)

    S3 File. Data used in the R code.

    (XLSX)

    Attachment

    Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_YQS_v2.0.docx

    Attachment

    Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_YQS_R1.docx

    Data Availability Statement

    All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.


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