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The following is a summary of “Exploration of the association between 91 inflammatory proteins and immune thrombocytopenia: a two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis,” published in the April 2025 issue of International Journal of Hematology by Qin et al. 

Researchers conducted a prospective study to assess the association between 91 circulating inflammatory proteins and immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) using mendelian randomization (MR). 

They used genome-wide association studies (GWAS) data on 91 inflammatory proteins from 14,824 participants via the Olink Target platform and ITP data from 675 patients and 488,749 controls from the OPEN GWAS project. Inverse-variance weighting (IVW) was applied for MR analysis, with MR-Egger, weighted median, simple mode, and weighted mode as supplements, and assessed pleiotropy and heterogeneity using MR-Egger-intercept and Cochran’s Q test. 

The results showed an association between 6 inflammatory proteins and ITP using IVW. C–C motif chemokine 4-like (CCL4), C–X–C motif chemokine 9 (CXCL9), interleukin-12 subunit B (IL-12B), stem cell factor (SCF) was positively associated, while interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1α) and TNF-related activation-induced cytokine (TRANCE) showed negative correlation. 

Investigators suggested a potential link between circulating inflammatory proteins and ITP. They provided insights for future therapeutic strategies and biomarker identification. 

Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12185-025-03987-1