Abstract
Objective
Observational studies suggested that peripheral blood eosinophils were associated with the risk of nasal polyps. However, these studies did not confirm the causality. This study aims to apply Mendelian randomization (MR) method to comprehensively assess the potential causal association between peripheral blood eosinophils and nasal polyps.
Methods
Genetic instrumental variables were extracted from the largest available genome-wide association study (GWAS) of European participants, which were used to investigate the relationship between peripheral blood eosinophils and nasal polyps. The inverse variance weighted method, the MR Egger method, and the weighted median method were applied for this analysis. MR-Egger intercept tests, leave-one-out analyses, and funnel plots were performed for the sensitivity analysis.
Results
With the inverse variance weighted method, the MR analysis suggested that there was a significant difference between peripheral blood eosinophils and the risk of nasal polyps (ukb-a-97, OR 1.004, 95% CI 1.003–1.005, p < 0.001; ukb-a-541, OR 1.005, 95% CI 1.004–1.006, p < 0.001; ukb-b-7211, OR 1.004, 95% CI 1.003–1.005, p < 0.001; ukb-b-8425, OR 1.004, 95% CI 1.003–1.005, p < 0.001; finn-b-J10_NASALPOLYP, OR 3.089, 95% CI 2.537–3.761, p < 0.001). Consistent results were also proved by using the weighted median method and the MR Egger method.
Conclusions
Our findings reveal the causal effect of peripheral blood eosinophils on the increased risk of nasal polyps.
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Data availability
Not applicable.
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Acknowledgement
We are grateful to Dr. Hui-Zi Li for his technical support.
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G-J Huang, Z-J Fan, and S-H Li performed the conception and designed this manuscript. G-J Huang and Z-Q Chen performed data analysis and prepared the figure. G-J Huang drafted the manuscript. Z-J Fan and S-H Li revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Huang, GJ., Chen, ZQ., Fan, ZJ. et al. The causal association between peripheral blood eosinophils and nasal polyps: a Mendelian randomization study. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 280, 4285–4290 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-023-08129-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-023-08129-z