Publication date: Jul 27, 2024
Evidence suggests that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with the risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, the results are inconsistent, and the causality remains to be established. We aimed to investigate the potential causal relationship between COVID-19 and CVDs by using two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. Summary-level data for COVID-19 and CVDs including myocarditis, heart failure (HF), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), arrhythmia and venous thromboembolism (VTE) were obtained from the IEU OpenGWAS project, a public genome-wide association study (GWAS). Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were used as instrumental variables. Five complementary MR methods were performed, including inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted mode and simple mode methods. IVW method was considered as the primary approach. Besides, sensitivity analyses, including Cochran’s Q test, MR-Egger intercept test, and leave-one-out analysis, were performed to evaluate the robustness of the results. According to the IVW results, our MR study indicated that genetically predicted COVID-19 was not causally connected with the risk of CVDs [myocarditis: odds ratio (OR) = 1. 407, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0. 761-2. 602, p-value = 0. 277; HF: OR = 1. 180, 95% CI = 0. 980-1. 420, p-value = 0. 080; AMI: OR = 1. 002, 95% CI = 0. 998-1. 005, p-value = 0. 241; arrhythmia: OR = 0. 865, 95% CI = 0. 717-1. 044, p-value = 0. 132; VTE: OR = 1. 013, 95% CI = 0. 997-1. 028, p-value = 0. 115]. The supplementary MR methods showed similar results. Sensitivity analyses suggested that the causal estimates were robust. This two-sample MR analysis did not provide sufficient evidence for a causal relationship between COVID-19 and the risk of acute CVDs, which may provide new insights into the prevention of acute CVDs in COVID-19 patients.