Data_Sheet_1.docx

Abstract

Hypertension has been reported as a major risk factor for diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and associations between platelet activation and risk for hypertension are well established. However, the exact nature of causality between them remains unclear. In this study, a bi-directional Mendelian Randomization (MR) analysis is conducted on 15,996 healthy Taiwanese individuals aged between 30 and 70 years from the Taiwan Biobank, recorded between 2008 and 2015. The inverse variance weighted (IVW) method is applied to determine the causal relationship between platelet count and hypertension with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as instrumental variables (IVs). Furthermore, to check for pleiotropy and validity of the IVs, sensitivity analyses was performed using the MR-Egger, weighted median and simple median methods. This study provided evidence in support of a positive causal effect of platelet count on the risk of hypertension (odds ratio: 1.149, 95% confidence interval: 1.131-1.578, P<0.05), using the weighted median method. Significant causal effect of platelet count on hypertension was observed using the IVW method. No pleiotropy was observed. The causal effect of hypertension on platelet count was found to be non-significant. Therefore, higher platelet count could be used as a risk indicator for early diagnosis of hypertension, that can prevent further cardiovascular related morbidity and mortality in the general population from Taiwan.