AUTHOR=Xu Shu-Zhen , Wang Zhi-Xin , Fang Xi , Chen Cong , Yang Xiao-Ke , Shuai Zong-Wen , Tao Sha-Sha 

TITLE=No genetic causal association between systemic lupus erythematosus and COVID-19

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1183570

DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2023.1183570

ISSN=1664-3224

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Objective</title><p>Emerging evidence suggests an increased prevalence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the prototype of autoimmune disease, compared to the general population. However, the conclusions were inconsistent, and the causal relationship between COVID-19 and SLE remains unknown.</p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>In this study, we aimed to evaluate the bidirectional causal relationship between COVID-19 and SLE using bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis, including MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted mode, and the inverse variance weighting (IVW) method.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>The results of IVW showed a negative effect of SLE on severe COVID-19 (OR = 0.962, <italic>p</italic> = 0.040) and COVID-19 infection (OR = 0.988, <italic>p</italic> = 0.025), which disappeared after Bonferroni correction. No causal effect of SLE on hospitalized COVID-19 was observed (OR = 0.983, <italic>p</italic> = 0.148). In the reverse analysis, no causal effects of severe COVID-19 infection (OR = 1.045, <italic>p</italic> = 0.664), hospitalized COVID-19 (OR = 0.872, <italic>p</italic> = 0.109), and COVID-19 infection (OR = 0.943, <italic>p</italic> = 0.811) on SLE were found.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p>The findings of our bidirectional causal inference analysis did not support a genetically predicted causal relationship between SLE and COVID-19; thus, their association observed in previous observational studies may have been caused by confounding factors.</p></sec>