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Systemic lupus erythematosus and thyroid disease: a Mendelian randomization study

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Abstract

Objectives

To clarify the controversy between systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and thyroid disease, our study was designed to determine whether or not thyroid problems are associated with SLE.

Methods

We obtained the IEU GWAS database for summary information on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of SLE and thyroid disease (hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism) in people with European ancestry. Three approaches were employed to assess the causal link between SLE and thyroid disease: MR-Egger, weighted median (WM), and inverse variance weighted (IVW). The pleiotropy and heterogeneity were examined using a variety of techniques, including the MR-Egger intercept, the MR-PRESSO approach, and the Cochran’s Q test.

Results

MR analysis revealed a relationship between SLE and an elevated incidence of hypothyroidism (IVW OR: 1.004, 95% CI: [1.003, 1.005], P = 8.45E-16) and hyperthyroidism (IVW OR: 1.0009, 95% CI: [1.0005, 1.0010], P = 1.30E-5). Neither horizontal pleiotropy nor heterogeneity was detected in the sensitivity analysis.

Conclusion

Our MR study presents strong evidence demonstrating a link between SLE and an elevated risk of thyroid illness. This could help us learn more about what causes SLE and give people with SLE more thorough thyroid function tests and evaluations.

Key points

• We did not discover modest heterogeneity and pleiotropy in our study.

•The findings of this study indicate that SLE is related to an elevated risk of hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism.

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Data availability

The GWAS summary datasets for SLE (GWAS ID: ebi-a-GCST003156), hypothyroidism (GWAS ID: ukb-b-19732), and hyperthyroidism (GWAS ID: ukb-b-20289) are available through the ieu open gwas project (https://gwas.mrcieu.ac.uk/datasets).

Abbreviations

SLE :

Systemic lupus erythematosus

AITD :

Autoimmune thyroid diseases

GW AS :

Genome-wide association study

SNP :

Single nucleotide polymorphism

MR :

Mendelian randomization

WM :

Weighted median

MR-Egger :

The Mendelian randomization-Egger

IVW :

Inverse variance weighted

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Acknowledgements

For the data used in these analyses, we gratefully acknowledge the ieu open gwas project (https://gwas.mrcieu.ac.uk/datasets/) and the Phenoscanner database (http://www.phenoscanner.medschl.cam.ac.uk/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China

    Lincheng Duan, Yue Shi & Yue Feng

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  1. Lincheng Duan
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Contributions

LD: writing—original draft preparation, conceptualization, data curation; YS: methodology, visualization; YF: mentoring, editing, and writing—review. All authors made contributions to the article and approved the final manuscript version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yue Feng.

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The data used in our MR analysis is entirely from previously reported summary data. Therefore, neither patient consent nor ethical approval was necessary for the study.

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Duan, L., Shi, Y. & Feng, Y. Systemic lupus erythematosus and thyroid disease: a Mendelian randomization study. Clin Rheumatol 42, 2029–2035 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-023-06598-5

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