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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cardiovasc. Med.
Sec. Coronary Artery Disease
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2024.1416112
This article is part of the Research Topic Immune Cells, Inflammation, and Cardiovascular Disease: Advancements in Novel Drug Discoveries to Immunotherapeutic Strategies View all 5 articles

Causal relationship between immune cells and risk of myocardial infarction: Evidence from a Mendelian Randomization Study

Provisionally accepted
Wenjing Cao Wenjing Cao 1Kui Wang Kui Wang 2,3Jiawei Wang Jiawei Wang 4Hanxian Gong Hanxian Gong 1Lei Xiao Lei Xiao 1Wei Pan Wei Pan 1*
  • 1 Foshan Women and Children Hospital, Foshan, China
  • 2 The First People’s Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
  • 3 School of Medicine, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
  • 4 Jieyang Third People's Hospital, jie'yang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Atherosclerotic plaque rupture is a major cause of heart attack. Previous studies have shown that immune cells are involved in the development of atherosclerosis, but different immune cells play different roles. The aim of this study was to investigate the causal relationship between immunological traits and myocardial infarction (MI).To assess the causal association of immunological profiles with myocardial infarction based on publicly available genome-wide studies, we used a two-sample mendelian randomization (MR) approach with inverse variance weighted (IVW) as the main analytical method. Sensitivity analyses were used to assess heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy.Results: A two-sample MR analysis was conducted using IVW as the primary method. At a significance level of 0.001, we identified 47 immunophenotypes that have a significant causal relationship with MI.Seven of these were present in B cells, five in cDC, four in T cells at the maturation stage, six in monocytes, five in myeloid cells, 12 in TBNK cells, and eight in Treg cells. Sensitivity analyses were performed to confirm the robustness of the MR results.Our results provide strong evidence that multiple immune cells have a causal effect on the risk of myocardial infarction. This discovery provides a new avenue for the development of therapeutic treatments for myocardial infarction and a new target for drug development.

    Keywords: causal inference, Myocardial Infarction, Genome-Wide Association Study, MR analysis, Immunity

    Received: 11 Apr 2024; Accepted: 01 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Cao, Wang, Wang, Gong, Xiao and Pan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Wei Pan, Foshan Women and Children Hospital, Foshan, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.