Effects of COVID-19 on the cardiovascular system: A mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Infections with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and disorders of the heart and blood vessels are causally related. To ascertain the causal relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease (CVD), we carried out a Mendelian randomization (MR) study through a method known as inverse variance weighting (IVW). When analyzing multiple SNPs, MR can meta-aggregate the effects of multiple loci by using IVW meta-pooling method. The weighted median (WM) is the median of the distribution function obtained by ranking all individual SNP effect values according to their weights. WM yields robust estimates when at least 50% of the information originates from valid instrumental variables (IVs). Directed gene pleiotropy in the included IVs is permitted because MR-Egger does not require a regression straight line through the origin. For MR estimation, IVW, WM and MR-Egger were employed. Sensitivity analysis was conducted using funnel plots, Cochran's Q test, MR-Egger intercept test, MR-PRESSO, and leave-one-out analysis. SNPs related to exposure to COVID-19 and CVD were compiled. CVD for COVID-19 infection, COVID-19 laboratory/self-reported negative, and other very severe respiratory diagnosis and population were randomly assigned using MR. The COVID-19 laboratory/self-reported negative results and other very severe respiratory confirmed cases versus MR analysis of CVD in the population (p ​> ​0.05); COVID-19 infection to CVD (p ​= ​0.033, OR ​= ​1.001, 95%CI: 1.000-1.001); and the MR-Egger results indicated that COVID-19 infection was associated with CVD risk. This MR study provides preliminary evidence for the validity of the causal link between COVID-19 infection and CVD.

Keywords

Cardiovascular disease / Mendelian randomization (MR) / COVID-19 / Genome-wide association studies / GWAS

Data availability statement

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: (i) IEU Open GWAS project (https://gwas.mrcieu.ac.uk/).

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.82074396), China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Innovation Project (CI2021A05011), China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Innovation Project (CI2021B017-05), China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Guang'anmen Hospital Renewal of Talent Program for Young Top Talent Training Project, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Regional Collaborative Innovation Special Project (Shanghai Cooperation Organization Science and Technology Partnership Program and International Science and Technology Cooperation Program), “Research on International Scientific and Technological Cooperation and Services for Overseas Registration and Clinical Use of Ethnic Medicines (2022E01001)".

Submission statement

This manuscript is an original work that has not been previously published, nor will it be under consideration for publication by any other journal before a decision has been made by ​Sports Medicine ​and Health Science. If accepted, this manuscript will not be published elsewhere. All authors have read and agree with manuscript content.

Ethical approval statement

The data used in this study were obtained from the GWAS public database and did not involve human experimentation or animal manipulation.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Qingzhi Ran: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Software, Methodology, Data curation, Conceptualization. Aoshuang Li: Formal analysis, Data curation. Rui Li: Investigation, Funding acquisition. Yuyang Dong: Project administration, Methodology. Xue Xiao: Software, Resources. Kun Wang: Validation, Supervision. Hengwen Chen: Writing - original draft, Visualization. Benxiang He: Writing - review & editing, Resources.

Conflict of interest

Benxiang He is an editorial board member for Sports Medicine and Health Science and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. Otherwise, authors declare no conflict of interest.

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