BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Calcium levels have been proposed to play an important role in the selective vulnerability of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson's disease (PD). Recently, an association was reported between the calcium buffer, calbindin (rs1805874) and risk of PD in a Japanese patient-control series.
METHODS: We genotyped rs1805874 in four independent Caucasian patient-control series (1543 PD patients, 1771 controls).
RESULTS: There was no evidence of an association between rs1805874 and disease risk in individual populations or in the combined series (odds ratio: 1.04, 95% CI: 0.82-1.31, P = 0.74).
DISCUSSION: Our study shows there is no association between rs1805874 and risk for PD in four Caucasian populations. This suggests the effect of calbindin on PD risk displays population specificity.