Two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization for analyzing the causal effect between gastroesophageal reflux disease and migraine headaches / 西安交通大学学报(医学版)

ABSTRACT

【Objective】 To explore the causal association between the onset of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and migraine and to provide genetic evidence, a two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) method was used in this study. 【Methods】 Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information for both samples was obtained from publicly available genome-wide association study (GWAS) databases, in which the appropriate SNPs were selected as instrumental variables, and then bidirectional MR analysis used five MR analysis methods including inverse variance weighting (IVW), MR-Egger regression, weighted median, weighted mode and simple mode methods, followed by sensitivity analysis. 【Results】 IVW showed positive results of forward MR analysis with GERD as exposure [OR=1.398 7, 95%CI (1.181 7-1.655 6), P=9.59×10-5] , while no positive significance of reverse MR analysis results with migraine as exposure (P>0.05). The same results were obtained in methods other than MR-Egger method. Meanwhile, none of the instrumental variables were found to be horizontally polytomous (P=0.92, P=0.64), and the results were robust after the leave-one-out method to exclude single SNPs. 【Conclusion】 There may be a unidirectional causal association between GERD and migraine, and GERD is a risk factor for migraine development.