Title: Serious COVID-19 may have a causal relationship with myocardial injury: A Mendelian randomization study

• Published in: Frontiers in genetics 2023-03, Vol.14, p.1135887-1135887
• Main Authors: Liu, Mei Jia, Sun, Xue Qing, Li, Long Bo, Wang, Guan, Shi, Yong Feng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: COVID-19; Genetics; Mendelian randomization; myocardial injury; SARS-CoV-2; troponin I
• ISSN: 1664-8021; 1664-8021
• DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1135887

The association of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with myocardial injury is not well known. This study explored the association between them using the Mendelian randomization (MR) method. We obtained summary data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on myocardial injury and COVID-19 from public databases. Then, as tool variables, we chose single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with susceptibility and COVID-19 severity to investigate the causal relationship of COVID-19 with myocardial injury using inverse-variance weighting (IVW) as the primary approach. Finally, the reliability of the results was evaluated by performing sensitivity analyses. As revealed by the IVW analyses, the seriously hospitalized patients with COVID-19 had causality with myocardial injury, with an β of 0.14 and 95% confidence interval (CI) of 0.03-0.25 ( = 0.01). The results showed that COVID-19 with severe respiratory symptoms positively affected myocardial injury ( = 0.11, 95% CI = 0.03-0.19; = 0.005). According to this study, severe respiratory symptoms and hospitalization due to COVID-19 may increase the risk of myocardial injury.