Causal associations between COVID-19 and diseases of seven organs: A proteome-wide Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses an enormous threat to public health worldwide. Many retrospective studies and case reports to date have shown associations between severe COVID-19 and multi-organs. However, the research on the causal mechanisms behind this phenomenon is neither extensive nor comprehensive. We conducted a proteome-wide Mendelian randomization (MR) study using summary statistics from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of severe COVID-19 and diseases related to seven organs: lung, spleen, liver, heart, kidney, testis, and thyroid, based on the European ancestry. We filtered the data using multi-organ proteomic data from autopsies of COVID-19 cases from previous studies. The primary analytical method used is the radial inverse variance-weighted (radial IVW) method, supplemented with the inverse variance-weighted (IVW), weighted-median (WM), MR-Egger methods. Our findings have confirmed the association between severe COVID-19 and multiple organ-related diseases, such as Hypothyroidism, strict autoimmune (HTCBSA), Thyroid disorders (TD), and Graves’ disease (GD). However, we did not find correlations between severe COVID-19 and certain organ-related diseases that have been clinically established. And we’ve also identified some proteins that are associated with organ-related disease.