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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.
Sec. Pulmonary Medicine
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1447673
This article is part of the Research Topic Road Trip from Mild to Severe Asthmatic Inflammation: The Traffic Lights of Biomarkers in Asthma Management - Volume II View all 3 articles

Causality between various cytokines and asthma: a bidirectional twosample Mendelian randomization analysis

Provisionally accepted
Yansen Zheng Yansen Zheng 1*QI CHEN QI CHEN 2Xiaqing Shi Xiaqing Shi 2*Lei Lei Lei Lei 2*Donglin Wang Donglin Wang 1*
  • 1 Huanghe University of Science and Technology, Zhengzhou, China
  • 2 Jice medical institute, Xi'an, China

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

    Background: Many studies have shown that cytokines play an important role in the pathogenesis of asthma, but their biological effects on asthma remain unclear. The Mendelian randomization (MR) method was used to evaluate the causal relationship between various cytokines [such as interleukins (ILs), interferons (IFNs), tumor necrosis factors (TNFs), colony-stimulating factors (CSFs), transforming growth factor (TGF), etc.] and asthma.Methods: In this study, inverse variance weighting was used to evaluate the causal relationship between asthma and cytokines. In addition, the reliability of the results is ensured by multiple methods such as MR-Egger, weighted median, MR-Raps, MR-Presso, and RadialMR, as well as sensitivity analysis.The results showed that none of the 11 cytokines was associated with the risk of asthma. In contrast, asthma can increase levels of IL-5 [odds ratio (OR) = 1.112, 95% confidence interval (CI):1.009-1.224, P = 0.032] and IL-9 (OR = 1.111, 95% CI: 1.013-1.219, P = 0.025).Conclusions: Genetically predicted asthma was positively associated with elevated levels of IL-5 and IL-9, indicating the downstream effects of IL-5 and IL-9 on asthma. Medical treatments can thus be designed to target IL-5 and IL-9 to prevent asthma exacerbations.

    Keywords: Asthma, Interleukins, Interferons, Tumor Necrosis Factors, Mendelian randomization

    Received: 12 Jun 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zheng, CHEN, Shi, Lei and Wang. 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:
    Yansen Zheng, Huanghe University of Science and Technology, Zhengzhou, China
    Xiaqing Shi, Jice medical institute, Xi'an, China
    Lei Lei, Jice medical institute, Xi'an, China
    Donglin Wang, Huanghe University of Science and Technology, Zhengzhou, 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.