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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Thyroid Endocrinology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2024.1440941
This article is part of the Research Topic The Association of Other Autoimmune Diseases in Patients with Thyroid Autoimmunity: Volume II View all 15 articles

The genetic link between Thyroid dysfunction and Alopecia areata: A bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Provisionally accepted
Mingwei Chen Mingwei Chen 1,2*Le Gao Le Gao 1Wenrui Li Wenrui Li 1Qiang Song Qiang Song 3Hengxing Gao Hengxing Gao 1
  • 1 Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
  • 2 The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
  • 3 Department of Structural Cardiology, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

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

    Although descriptive studies have found an association between thyroid dysfunction (TD) and alopecia areata (AA), however, the causal relationship between TD and AA remains unclear. The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between the two and the specific directions.We performed large-scale, two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to examine whether there was an association between TD (such as Graves' disease (GD), Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT), thyroid cancer (TC), thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), etc.) and AA. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics for TD and AA were from the IEU OpenGwas project. The inverse variance-weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary analysis method to evaluate the causality between TD and AA, supplemented by the weighted median, MR-Egger, simple mode and weighted mode. In addition, sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the reliability of the study results.Our study found that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in HT (IVW OR = 1.396, 95% CI 1.030-1.892, P=0.031) and hypothyroidism (IVW OR = 1.431, 95% CI 1.138-1.799, P=0.002) significantly increased the risk of AA. Reverse MR analysis indicated that genetic susceptibility to AA (β=-0.029, 95%CI=-0.051 to -0.007, P=0.009) may be a risk for TRH. Positive MR analysis observed no statistically significant causal relationship between other TD and AA (IVW P>0.05). Reverse MR analysis also showed no statistically significant association between AA and other TD (IVW P>0.05) other than TRH. Furthermore, additional sensitivity analyses were performed, including a leave-one-out test, a heterogeneity test, and a pleiotropy test to assess the robustness of the results.This study provides a very comprehensive analysis of the causal relationship between TD and AA, providing convincing genetic evidence to support the causal relationship between TD and alopecia areata. It reveals some causes of AA patients, which is of great significance for the management and treatment of AA patients.

    Keywords: Alopecia Areata, causal relationship, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, thyroid dysfunction, twosample Mendelian randomization

    Received: 30 May 2024; Accepted: 30 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chen, Gao, Li, Song and Gao. 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: Mingwei Chen, Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China

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