Mood swings are causally associated with intracranial aneurysm subarachnoid hemorrhage: A Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Background: Mood swings have been observed in patients with intracranial aneurysm (IA), but it is still unknown whether mood swings can affect IA.

Aim: To explore the causal association between mood swings or experiencing mood swings and IA through a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study.

Methods: Summary-level statistics of mood swings, experiencing mood swings, IA, aneurysm-associated subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH), and non-ruptured IA (uIA) were collected from the genome-wide association study. Two-sample MR and various sensitivity analyses were employed to explore the causal association between mood swings or experiencing mood swings and IA, or aSAH, or uIA. The inverse-variance weighted method was used as the primary method.

Results: Genetically determined mood swings (odds ratio [OR] = 5.23, 95% confidence interval (95%CI): 1.65-16.64, p = .005) and experiencing mood swings (OR = 2.50, 95%CI: 1.37-4.57, p = .003) were causally associated with an increased risk of IA. Mood swings (OR = 5.67, 95%CI: 1.40-23.04, p = .015) and experiencing mood swings were causally associated with the risk of aSAH (OR = 2.91, 95%CI: 1.47-5.75, p = .002). Neither mood swings (OR = 1.95, 95%CI: .31-12.29, p = .478) nor experiencing mood swings (OR = 1.20, 95%CI: .48-3.03, p = .693) were associated with uIA.

Conclusions: Mood swings and experiencing mood swings increased the risk of IA and aSAH incidence. These results suggest that alleviating mood swings may reduce IA rupture incidence and aSAH incidence.

Keywords: emotion; genetics; neurosurgery; stroke.