Immunocyte phenotypes underlying the causal autoimmune features in narcolepsy type 1

Narcolepsy is a neurological sleep disorder associated with immune response. However, the autoimmune basis for narcolepsy remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the causal relationship between immune cells and narcolepsy type 1 (NT1).

We used a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) method to investigate the associations between 731 immune cell traits and NT1 based on a genome-wide association study (GWAS) database from the FinnGen consortium. The inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary method, followed by sensitivity analyses, including the MR-Egger intercept test, Cochran's Q test, and MR pleiotropy residual sum and outlier (MR-PRESSO). Additional mediation analysis was conducted to investigate the mediating effect of 91 cytokines on immune cells to facilitate the immune processes in NT1.

Immune cell traits showed significant causal associations with NT1. Risk-associated traits mainly involved human leukocyte antigen-DR (HLA-DR)-related monocyte phenotypes, T-cell-related traits, natural killer (NK) cell-related traits, and natural killer T (NKT) cell-related traits, whereas protective traits mainly involved CD4+ T-cell-related, plasmacytoid dendritic cell-related, monocyte-related, and B-cell-related phenotypes. Overall, ten immune cell traits were associated with an increased risk of narcolepsy, whereas five were associated with a reduced risk. Mediation analysis further indicated that interleukin-6 (IL-6) mediates the immune-inflammatory pathway linking monocyte-related traits to NT1. These findings remained consistent in all sensitivity analyses.

Our study identified immunophenotypes that are related to the development of NT1, providing insight into the autoimmune pathogenesis of NT1 and subsequent immunotherapy.