Association Between Atopic Dermatitis and Major Cardiovascular Outcomes: a Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study

INTRODUCTION: Atopic dermatitis (AD) has been linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) in population-based studies, however, their causal relationship is still unclear. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the causal association of AD with risk of cardiovascular outcomes using a Mendelian randomization (MR) approach. METHODS: We extracted summary-level data for AD, stroke, heart failure, coronary artery disease (CAD), myocardial infarction, angina pectoris from published, nonoverlapping genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Inverse variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary analysis. Alternative methods, including weighted median, MR Egger, MR-Pleiotropy Residual Sum and Outlier, weighted mode, and leave-out analysis, were performed to examine potential pleiotropy. RESULTS: Thirteen SNPs (13,287 cases and 41,345 controls) were selected as instrumental variables (IVs). No associations of AD with risks of stroke (odds ratio [OR] = 1.03, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.97–1.09, P = 0.3630), heart failure (OR = 1.04, 95%CI: 0.99–1.09, P= 0.119), coronary artery disease (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 0.96–1.05, P = 0.988), myocardial infarction (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 1.00-1.00, P = 0.322), and angina pectoris (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 1.00-1.00, P = 0.369) was found. No significant effect of pleiotropy was detected. CONCLUSIONS: This MR study does not support a causal effect of AD on stroke, heart failure, CAD, myocardial infarction, angina pectoris.