Causal associations between COVID-19 and diseases of seven organs: A
proteome-wide Mendelian randomization study
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses an enormous
threat to public health worldwide. Many retrospective studies and case
reports to date have shown associations between severe COVID-19 and
multi-organs. However, the research on the causal mechanisms behind this
phenomenon is neither extensive nor comprehensive. We conducted a
proteome-wide Mendelian randomization (MR) study using summary
statistics from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of severe
COVID-19 and diseases related to seven organs: lung, spleen, liver,
heart, kidney, testis, and thyroid, based on the European ancestry. We
filtered the data using multi-organ proteomic data from autopsies of
COVID-19 cases from previous studies. The primary analytical method used
is the radial inverse variance-weighted (radial IVW) method,
supplemented with the inverse variance-weighted (IVW), weighted-median
(WM), MR-Egger methods. Our findings have confirmed the association
between severe COVID-19 and multiple organ-related diseases, such as
Hypothyroidism, strict autoimmune (HTCBSA), Thyroid disorders (TD), and
Graves’ disease (GD). However, we did not find correlations between
severe COVID-19 and certain organ-related diseases that have been
clinically established. And we’ve also identified some proteins that are
associated with organ-related disease.