Abstract
BackgroundEpidemiological reports indicate a potential association between androgenic alopecia (AGA) and increased prostate cancer (PC) prevalence, but conflicting reports also exist. This study aims to elucidate the causality of AGA on PC risk using Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. Materials and methodsTwo-sample MR analyses utilized public genome-wide association studies summary data for single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with AGA. Four statistical methods were used: inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, and weighted mode, with IVW as the preliminary estimation method. Additionally, sensitivity analyses were conducted to address pleiotropic bias. ResultsGenetically proxied AGA did not demonstrate a causal effect on PC risk (IVW P > 0.05). Consistently, complementary methods yielded results aligned with IVW. ConclusionsOur MR analysis indicates no causal relationship between genetically predicted AGA and PC risk, suggesting that observed associations in epidemiological studies may not be causal.
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