Association between Atopic Dermatitis and Major Cardiovascular Outcomes: A Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study

Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) has been linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) in population-based studies, however, their causal relationship is still unclear. Objective: To evaluate the causal association of AD with risk of cardiovascular outcomes using a Mendelian randomization (MR) approach. Method: We extracted summary-level data for AD, stroke, heart failure, coronary artery disease (CAD), myocardial infarction, angina pectoris from published, nonoverlapping genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Inverse variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary analysis. Alternative methods, including weighted median, MR Egger, MR-Pleiotropy Residual Sum and Outlier, weighted mode, and leave-out analysis, were performed to examine potential pleiotropy. Results: 13 SNPs (13,287 cases and 41,345 controls) were selected as instrumental variables (IVs). No associations of AD with risks of stroke [odds ratio (OR) = 1.03, 95%CI: 0.97-1.09, p = 0.3630], heart failure (OR = 1.04, 95%CI: 0.99-1.09, p= 0.119), coronary artery disease (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 0.96-1.05, p= 0.988), myocardial infarction (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 1.00-1.00, p= 0.322), and angina pectoris (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 1.00-1.00, p= 0.369) was found. No significant effect of pleiotropy was detected. Conclusions: This MR study does not support a causal effect of AD on stroke, heart failure, CAD, myocardial infarction, angina pectoris.