Abstract
Hypertension has been reported as a major risk factor for diseases such as cardiovascular disease, 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 was 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 was applied to determine the causal relationship between platelet count and hypertension with single nucleotide polymorphisms as instrumental variables (IVs). Furthermore, to check for pleiotropy and validity of the IVs, sensitivity analyses were 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. A 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, the findings from this study provide evidence that higher platelet count may have a significant causal effect on the elevated risk of hypertension for the general population of Taiwan.
Highlights
Over the past two decades, hypertension has been reported as a major risk factor for diseases such cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and kidney disease [1]
The Global Burden of Disease study, a collaboration between the World Health Organization and the World Bank, reported detailed risk factors for blood pressure using disability-adjusted life-years, a metric calculated based on premature death due to heart disease [3, 4]
A total of 646,735 autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) underwent SNP-level quality checks where 22,437 variants were excluded with call rate
Summary
Over the past two decades, hypertension has been reported as a major risk factor for diseases such cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and kidney disease [1]. The Global Burden of Disease study, a collaboration between the World Health Organization and the World Bank, reported detailed risk factors for blood pressure using disability-adjusted life-years, a metric calculated based on premature death due to heart disease [3, 4]. Recent surveys have reported an Hypertension–Platelet: Bi-Directional MR increasing prevalence of hypertension in Taiwan, with ∼25% of the population being affected [5], and stroke, diabetes mellitus, and CVD are among the leading causes of overall mortality in the Taiwanese population [6]. Not much information is available on the causes of hypertension, and studies designed to understand the factors that have a causal effect on hypertension are needed
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