Genetic liability between COVID-19 and pre-eclampsia/eclampsia: a Mendelian randomization study

ABSTRACTObjective The aim of this study was to investigate the possible causal relationship between COVID-19 and the risk of pre-eclampsia/eclampsia using a Mendelian randomized (MR) design.Methods We estimated their genetic correlations and then performed two-sample Mendelian randomization analyses...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yuhang Xing, Zhen Wang, Xiaohua Qi, Qunli Xu, Rui Pu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2023-12-01
Series:Hypertension in Pregnancy
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10641955.2023.2285757
Description
Summary:ABSTRACTObjective The aim of this study was to investigate the possible causal relationship between COVID-19 and the risk of pre-eclampsia/eclampsia using a Mendelian randomized (MR) design.Methods We estimated their genetic correlations and then performed two-sample Mendelian randomization analyses using pooled statistics from the COVID-19 susceptibility/hospitalization genome-wide association study and the pre-eclampsia/eclampsia datasets. The main analyses were performed using the inverse variance weighting method, supplemented by the weighted median method and the MR-Egger method.Results We identified a significant and positive genetic correlation between COVID-19 susceptibility and pre-eclampsia/eclampsia [OR = 1.23 (1.01–1.51), p = 0.043]. Meanwhile, hospitalization of COVID-19 was significantly associated with a higher risk of pre-eclampsia/eclampsia [OR = 1.15 (1.02–1.30), p = 0.024]. Consistently, hospitalization of COVID-19 were nominally associated with higher risk of pre-eclampsia [OR = 1.14, (1.01–1.30), p = 0.040]. The results were robust under all sensitivity analyses.Conclusion These results suggest that COVID-19 may increase the risk of pre-eclampsia/eclampsia. Future development of preventive or therapeutic interventions should emphasize this to mitigate the complications of COVID-19. [Figure: see text]
ISSN:1064-1955
1525-6065