AUTHOR=Liu Mei Jia , Sun Xue Qing , Li Long Bo , Wang Guan , Shi Yong Feng 

TITLE=Title: Serious COVID-19 may have a causal relationship with myocardial injury: A Mendelian randomization study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2023.1135887

DOI=10.3389/fgene.2023.1135887

ISSN=1664-8021

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> The association of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with myocardial injury is not well known. This study explored the association between them using the Mendelian randomization (MR) method.</p><p><bold>Method:</bold> We obtained summary data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on myocardial injury and COVID-19 from public databases. Then, as tool variables, we chose single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with susceptibility and COVID-19 severity to investigate the causal relationship of COVID-19 with myocardial injury using inverse-variance weighting (IVW) as the primary approach. Finally, the reliability of the results was evaluated by performing sensitivity analyses.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> As revealed by the IVW analyses, the seriously hospitalized patients with COVID-19 had causality with myocardial injury, with an β of 0.14 and 95% confidence interval (CI) of 0.03–0.25 (<italic>p</italic> = 0.01). The results showed that COVID-19 with severe respiratory symptoms positively affected myocardial injury (<italic>β</italic> = 0.11, 95% CI = 0.03–0.19; <italic>p</italic> = 0.005).</p><p><bold>Conclusion:</bold> According to this study, severe respiratory symptoms and hospitalization due to COVID-19 may increase the risk of myocardial injury.</p>