A Mendelian randomization-based study of the causal relationship between cardiovascular-related diseases and endocarditis

Abstract

Abstract Objective: To investigate the causal relationship between cardiovascular-related diseases (coronary artery disease, heart failure, diabetes mellitus, systolic and diastolic blood pressure) and endocarditis. Methods: A two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study was performed to evaluate the causal effect of cardiovascular-related diseases on endocarditis. Statistical summaries for the associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and traits of interest were obtained from independent consortia with European populations. The dataset of cardiovascular-related diseases was acquired from genome-wide association studies (GWAS), including cases and controls (coronary artery disease:122733 cases and 424528 controls, hear failure: 47309 cases and 930014 controls, diabetes mellitus: 61714 cases and 1178 controls, systolic and diastolic blood pressure: 757601 samples). A GWAS with 1080 endocarditis cases and 485404 controls was used to identify genetic variation underlying cardiovascular-related diseases. Five complementary MR methods were performed, including inverse variance weighted method (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted mode, simple mode. Results: Genetically predicted coronary artery disease (odds ratio [OR] 1.326, 95%CI 1.085-1.622), heart failure (OR 1.961, 95%CI 1.103-3.487), systolic blood pressure (OR 1.039, 95%CI 1.023-1.055) and diastolic blood pressure (OR 1.030, 95%CI 1.002-1.059) was significantly positively associated with endocarditis. Diabetes was not associated with endocarditis (p=0.33). Conclusion: Coronary arterial disease, heart failure and hypertension were high risk factors of endocarditis while diabetes was not.