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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Perinatal Psychiatry
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1425623
This article is part of the Research Topic Suicidal behavior and depression among perinatal women: Research, Prevention, Intervention and Treatment View all 8 articles

Postpartum depression and autoimmune disease: a bidirectional Mendelian randomisation study

Provisionally accepted
Wenlong Yu Wenlong Yu 1bingxue su bingxue su 1,2*chaoqun wang chaoqun wang 1,2*qing xia qing xia 1,2*yinxiang sun yinxiang sun 2*mubiao liu mubiao liu 2*
  • 1 Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
  • 2 Zhuhai People's Hospital, Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China

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

    The rising prevalence of postpartum depression (PPD) is harmful to women and families. While there is a growing body of evidence suggesting an association between PPD and autoimmune diseases (ADs), the direction of causality remains uncertain. Therefore, Mendelian randomisation (MR) study was employed to investigate the potential causal relationship between the two.Methods: This study utilized large-scale genome-wide association study genetic pooled data from two major databases: the IEU OpenGWAS project and the FinnGen databases. The causal analysis methods used inverse variance weighting (IVW). The weighted median, MR-Egger method, MR-PRESSO test, and the leave-one-out sensitivity test have been used to examine the results' robustness, heterogeneity, and horizontal pleiotropy.Results: A total of 23 ADs were investigated in this study. In the IVW model, the MR study showed that PPD increased the risk of type 1 diabetes (OR ,=1.15 (1.05-1.26),p<0.01),Hashimoto's thyroiditis((OR) = 1.21 (1.09-1.34),p<0.0001),encephalitis((OR) = 1.66 (1.06-2.60),p<0.05). Reverse analysis showed that ADs could not genetically PPD. There was no significant heterogeneity or horizontal pleiotropy bias in this result.Conclusion: Our study suggests that PPD is a risk factor for type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and encephalitis from a gene perspective, while ADs are not a risk factor for PPD. This finding may provide new insights into prevention and intervention strategies for ADs according to PPD patients.

    Keywords: postpartum depression, autoimmune disease, Mendelian randomization, Genetic cause, etiology

    Received: 30 Apr 2024; Accepted: 19 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Yu, su, wang, xia, sun and liu. 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:
    bingxue su, Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
    chaoqun wang, Zhuhai People's Hospital, Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China
    qing xia, Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
    yinxiang sun, Zhuhai People's Hospital, Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China
    mubiao liu, Zhuhai People's Hospital, Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China

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