Cardiometabolic risks of SARS-CoV-2 hospitalization using Mendelian Randomization

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Abstract

Many cardiometabolic conditions have demonstrated associative evidence with COVID-19 hospitalization risk. However, the observational designs of the studies in which these associations are observed preclude causal inferences of hospitalization risk. Mendelian Randomization (MR) is an alternative risk estimation method more robust to these limitations that allows for causal inferences. We applied four MR methods (MRMix, IMRP, IVW, MREgger) to publicly available GWAS summary statistics from European (COVID-19 GWAS n = 2956) and multi-ethnic populations (COVID-19 GWAS n = 10,908) to better understand extant causal associations between Type II Diabetes (GWAS n = 659,316), BMI (n = 681,275), diastolic and systolic blood pressure, and pulse pressure (n = 757,601 for each) and COVID-19 hospitalization risk across populations. Although no significant causal effect evidence was observed, our data suggested a trend of increasing hospitalization risk for Type II diabetes (IMRP OR, 95% CI 1.67, 0.96–2.92) and pulse pressure (OR, 95% CI 1.27, 0.97–1.66) in the multi-ethnic sample. Type II diabetes and Pulse pressure demonstrates a potential causal association with COVID-19 hospitalization risk, the proper treatment of which may work to reduce the risk of a severe COVID-19 illness requiring hospitalization. However, GWAS of COVID-19 with large sample size is warranted to confirm the causality.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.30.20248889: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    We used PLINK v1.90b6.11[20] to select independent GWAS significant SNPs from the available millions of SNPs for each exposure.
    PLINK
    suggested: (PLINK, RRID:SCR_001757)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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