Associations of the circulating levels of cytokines with risk of ankylosing spondylitis: a Mendelian randomization study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Observational studies have shown that changes in circulating cytokine/growth factor levels occur throughout the initiation and progression of ankylosing spondylitis (AS), yet whether they are etiologic or downstream effects remains unclear. In this study, we performed a summarized-level bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to shed light on the causal relationship between the two.

Methods

Genetic instrumental-variables (IVs) associated with circulating cytokine/growth factor levels were derived from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 8,293 European individuals, whereas summary data for the AS were obtained from a FinnGen GWAS of 166,144 participants. We used the inverse-variance-weighted (IVW) method as the main analysis for causal inference.

SUBMITTER: Ye Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10761470 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature