Unraveling the causal association between leukocyte telomere length and infertility: A two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Infertility is a significant challenge in modern society, and observed studies have reported the association between telomere length and infertility. Whether this relationship is causal remains controversial.We employed two-sample mendelian randomization (MR) to investigate the causal relationship between leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and major causes of infertility, including male and female infertility, sperm abnormalities, and endometriosis. MR analyses were mainly performed using the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method and complemented with other MR methods.Our findings demonstrate a causal association between LTL and endometriosis (OR1.304, 95% CI (1.122,1.517), p = 0.001), suggesting its potential as a biomarker for this condition. However, we did not observe a significant causal relationship between LTL and other infertility causes.Our study presents compelling evidence on the relationship between LTL and endometriosis. Meanwhile, our study demonstrates that there is no causal relationship between LTL and infertility. This research contributes to the field by shedding light on the importance of LTL in the early diagnosis and intervention of endometriosis.