Causal association of gastroesophageal reflux disease on irritable bowel syndrome: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Huihuan Wu; Jingwei Li; FeiFei Li; Weijian Lun

doi:10.3389/fgene.2024.1328327

Causal association of gastroesophageal reflux disease on irritable bowel syndrome: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Front Genet. 2024 Mar 27:15:1328327. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2024.1328327. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Huihuan Wu^#¹, Jingwei Li^#², FeiFei Li³, Weijian Lun¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Gastroenterology, The Sixth Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, South China University of Technology, Foshan, Guangdong, China.
² Department of Gastroenterology, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital (Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences), Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
³ Department of Cardiology, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Recently, observational studies have reported that gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is commonly associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but the causal relationship is unclear.

Methods: We conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization study using summary data from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) to explore a causal relationship between GERD (N cases = 129,080) and IBS (N cases = 4,605) of European ancestry. Furthermore, the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method and a series of sensitivity analyses were used to assess the accuracy and confidence of our results.

Results: We found a significant association of GERD with IBS (NSNP = 74; OR: 1.375; 95% CI: 1.164-1.624; p < 0.001). Reverse MR analysis showed no evidence of a causal association for IBS with GERD (NSNP = 6; OR: 0.996; 95% CI: 0.960-1.034; p = 0.845).

Conclusion: This study provides evidence that the presence of GERD increases the risk of developing IBS, and it is observed from the reverse MR results that IBS did not increase the risk of GERD.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization; causal association; clinical guidance; gastroesophageal reflux disease; irritable bowel syndrome.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work is supported by the Health Commission of Guangdong Province (Grant No. B2021311).