Associations of cholecystectomy with the risk of gastroesophageal reflux disease: a mendelian randomization study.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Cholecystectomy is the standard surgery for patients with gallbladder disease, but the impact of cholecystectomy on gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is not clear. METHODS: We obtained genetic variants associated with cholecystectomy at a genome-wide significant level (P value<5 × 10-8) as instrumental variables (IVs) and performed Mendelian randomization (MR) to explore the relationship with GERD. RESULTS: The Inverse Variance Weighted analysis (IVW) showed that the risk of GERD in patients after cholecystectomy increased (OR=2.19; 95% CI 1.18 - 4.09). At the same time, the analysis results of weighted median (OR=2.30; 95% CI 1.51 - 3.48) and weighted mode (OR=2.21; 95% CI 1.42 - 3.45) were also consistent with the direction of the IVW analysis and were statistically significant (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that patients who have undergone cholecystectomy are a susceptible population of GERD.