Genetically Predicted Obesity Causally Increased the Risk of Hypertension Disorders in Pregnancy

Wenting Wang; Jiang-Shan Tan; Lu Hua; Shengsong Zhu; Hongyun Lin; Yan Wu; Jinping Liu

doi:10.3389/fcvm.2022.888982

Genetically Predicted Obesity Causally Increased the Risk of Hypertension Disorders in Pregnancy

Front Cardiovasc Med. 2022 May 25:9:888982. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2022.888982. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Wenting Wang^{1

2}, Jiang-Shan Tan³, Lu Hua³, Shengsong Zhu³, Hongyun Lin², Yan Wu³, Jinping Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Cardiopulmonary Bypass, State Key Laboratory of Cardiovascular Disease, Fuwai Hospital, National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.
² Department of Anaesthesiology, Second Affiliated Hospital, Hainan Medical College, Haikou, Hainan, China.
³ Center for Respiratory and Pulmonary Vascular Diseases, Department of Cardiology, Key Laboratory of Pulmonary Vascular Medicine, National Clinical Research Center of Cardiovascular Diseases, Fuwai Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the causal association between obesity and hypertension disorders in pregnancy.

Methods: Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study was conducted based on the data obtained from the GIANT (n = 98,697 participants) consortium and FinnGen (n = 96,449 participants) consortium to determine the causal effect of obesity on the risk of hypertension disorders in pregnancy. Based on a genome-wide significance, 14 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with obesity-related databases were used as instrumental variables. The random-effects inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method was adopted as the main analysis with a supplemented sensitive analysis of the MR-Egger and weighted median approaches.

Results: All three MR methods showed that genetically predicted obesity causally increased the risk of hypertension disorders in pregnancy. IVW analysis provided obesity as a risk factor for hypertension disorders in pregnancy with an odds ratio (OR) of 1.39 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.21-1.59; P = 2.46 × 10^-6]. Weighted median and MR Egger regression also showed directionally similar results [weighted median OR = 1.49 (95% CI, 1.24-1.79), P = 2.45 × 10^-5; MR-Egger OR = 1.95 (95% CI, 1.35-2.82), P = 3.84 × 10^-3]. No directional pleiotropic effects were found between obesity and hypertension disorders in pregnancy with both MR-Egger intercepts and funnel plots.

Conclusions: Our findings provided directed evidence that obesity was causally associated with a higher risk of hypertension disorders in pregnancy. Taking measures to reduce the proportion of obesity may help reduce the incidence of hypertension disorders in pregnancy.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization; genetic susceptibility; hypertension disorders in pregnancy; obesity; two-sample.