Abstract
BackgroundThe long-term health consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remain largely unclear. This study aimed to apply the Mendelian randomization (MR) design to estimate the causal associations between COVID-19 and ten cardiovascular conditions.MethodsSingle-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with COVID-19 were used as instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of COVID-19 on ten cardiovascular conditions. The random-effects inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method was conducted for the main analyses with a complementary analysis of the weighted median and MR-Egger approaches.ResultsIn the IVW analysis, genetically predicted COVID-19 was suggestively associated with major coronary heart disease events (OR 1.081; 95% CI 1.007–1.16; P = 0.045) and heart failure (OR 1.049; 95% CI 1.001–1.1; P = 0.045) with similar estimates in weighted median regressions. No directional pleiotropic effects were observed in both funnel plots and MR-Egger intercepts.ConclusionsOur findings provide direct evidence that patients infected with COVID-19 are causally associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, especially for major coronary heart disease events and heart failure.
Highlights
The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is rapidly evolving as a worldwide health crisis
Identification of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) Associated With COVID-19 Summary-level genetic data for COVID-19 were acquired from results of the Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care (GenOMICC) genome-wide association study (GWAS) [10], which included 2,244 critically ill COVID-19 patients from 208 UK intensive care units (ICUs) and 11,220 random controls matched by ancestry from UK Biobank
Eight single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with COVID-19 were obtained as instrumental variables (Supplementary Table 1), identified from the primary meta-analysis of 13,464 individuals based on the genome-wide significant level (P < 5 × 10−8) [11]
Summary
The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is rapidly evolving as a worldwide health crisis. A lot of studies have revealed a significant observational association between cardiovascular diseases and COVID-19 [1]. Some confounding factors may affect the reliability of these results, including unmeasured risk factors or other potential uncertainties It is not long since the discovery of COVID-19, the long-term effect of COVID-19 on cardiovascular diseases may not be reflected in the previous studies. The causal association between COVID-19 and cardiovascular diseases is unclear. These pieces of evidence are necessary and important because they can reflect the subsequent social burden and contribute to the government policy on public health. This study aimed to apply the Mendelian randomization (MR) design to estimate the causal associations between COVID-19 and ten cardiovascular conditions
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