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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Thyroid Endocrinology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2024.1369800

A Two-sample Bidirectional Mendelian Randomisation Analysis between Telomere Length and Hyperthyroidism

Provisionally accepted
Shiben Zhu Shiben Zhu 1HAO Ziyu HAO Ziyu 2Qihang Chen Qihang Chen 1Xiaoliu Liu Xiaoliu Liu 3Wenyan Wu Wenyan Wu 3Fang Zhang Fang Zhang 4*
  • 1 School of Nursing and Health Studies, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China
  • 2 The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong Region, China
  • 3 Medical Laboratory, Shenzhen Luohu People's Hospital,, Shenzhen, China
  • 4 Department of Science and Education, Shenzhen Baoan Women's and Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, China

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

    Background: hyperthyroidism characterized by low thyrotropin, highlighting complications and risks, including cardiac issues, osteoporosis, adverse pregnancy outcomes, unintentional weight loss, and increased mortality associated with untreated hyperthyroidism. However, the casual association between telomere length (TL) and hyperthyroidism remains unclear.Objective: We aim to explore the casual relationship between TL and hyperthyroidism.Methods: A two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis employed the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method, supplemented by additional approaches such as Weighted Median (WM), and MR Egger.The summary statistics for TL were derived from the UK Biobank, comprising 472,174 individuals, while the data for hyperthyroidism were sourced from the GWAS Catalog and the FinnGen 2 / 15 database, encompassing cohorts of 460,499 and 173,938 individuals, respectively. Utilizing 139 genome-wide significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as instrumental variables (IVs) for TL, forward MR analyses indicated a negative causal effect of TL on hyperthyroidism. The risk of hyperthyroidism decreased as genetically predicted TL increased by one standard deviation, as determined by the IVW form GWAS Catalog (OR:0.659,95%CI: 0.541-0.802, 𝒑𝒑<0.001) and IVW from FinnGen(OR:0.634, 95%CI: 0.479-0.840, 𝒑𝒑 = 0.001). Other MR methods exhibited a consistent trend in the impact of TL on hyperthyroidism. Reverse MR analysis suggested no causal association between TL and hyperthyroidism (𝒑𝒑 > 0.05). Sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of these results, suggesting minimal susceptibility to confounding factors and bias.The finding that longer telomeres reduce hyperthyroidism risk highlights the need to validate hyperthyroidism's impact on telomere length, offering valuable insights for prevention and treatment.

    Keywords: Mendelian Randomization Analysis, telomere length, Hyperthyroidism, casual effect, GWAS

    Received: 13 Jan 2024; Accepted: 27 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhu, Ziyu, Chen, Liu, Wu and Zhang. 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: Fang Zhang, Department of Science and Education, Shenzhen Baoan Women's and Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, China

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