Background: Although several observational studies have suggested positive associations between constipation and cardiovascular disease (CVD), a solid causal association has not been demonstrated. Therefore, a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study was performed to investigate the causal associations between constipation and CVD.
Methods: Independent genetic variants strongly associated with constipation were obtained from the FinnGen consortium. Summary-level data for CVD, including coronary artery disease (CAD), myocardial infarction (MI), heart failure (HF), atrial fibrillation (AF), stroke, and its subtypes, were collected from a few extensive genome-wide association studies (GWASs). The inverse-variance weighted methods, weighted median, and MR-Egger were used for the MR estimates. The Cochran's Q test, MR-Egger intercept tests, MR-PRESSO, MR Steiger test, leave-one-out analyses, and funnel plot were used in the sensitivity analysis.
Results: Genetically determined constipation was suggestively associated with AF risk (odds ratio (OR), 1.07; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.01, 1.14; p = 0.016). Constipation and other CVD do not appear to be causally related. It was demonstrated that the results were robust through sensitivity analyses.
Conclusion: This MR study demonstrated suggestive causal associations of constipation on AF, despite no associations achieving a significance value after multiple testing corrections. There was no evidence of an association between constipation and the risk of CAD, MI, HF, stroke, or stroke subtypes.
Keywords: Mendelian randomization; atrial fibrillation; cardiovascular disease; causality; constipation.
Copyright © 2023 Dong, Chen, Zhang, Xu, Yan and Jiang.