Causal Effects of Lipids-Related Metabolites on Androgenic Alopecia: A Mendelian Randomization Study.

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To investigate whether increased levels of lipids-related metabolites (LRMs) result in androgenic alopecia (AGA). Patients and Methods: A two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study was designed, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) respectively related to nine LRMs were selected from the genome-wide association study (GWAS) dataset. An MR analysis was performed to assess the causal association between LRMs and AGA. Results: Through the fixed-effect inverse variance weighting (IVW) method, MR analysis indicated that Apolipoprotein B (ApoB), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) had a causal relationship with AGA. No obvious heterogeneity or pleiotropy was observed. Conclusion: The risk of AGA increases significantly when the serum levels of ApoB, LDL, and VLDL increase. This causal relationship is solid and free of interference from confounding factors.