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. 2024 Aug 5:15:1434521.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1434521. eCollection 2024.

Genetic insights into the gut microbiota and risk of psoriasis: a bidirectional mendelian randomization study

Minyu Qian #  1 , Jianxin Shi #  1 , Zhuoya Zhang  1 , Dezhao Bi  1 , Cheng Tan  1
Affiliations

Genetic insights into the gut microbiota and risk of psoriasis: a bidirectional mendelian randomization study

Minyu Qian et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

Background: Growing evidence indicates a potential association between the gut microbiome and psoriasis. Nevertheless, the precise nature of these associations and whether they constitute causal relationships remain unclear.

Methods: A rigorous bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization study was undertaken to establish a putative causal link between gut microbiota and psoriasis. We drew upon publicly available datasets containing summary statistics from GWAS to accomplish this. Utilizing various analytical techniques, including inverse variance weighting, MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted model, and MR-PRESSO, we sought to validate the putative causal association between gut microbiota and psoriasis. A reverse Mendelian randomization analysis was conducted to further investigate the relationship.

Results: After conducting a forward Mendelian randomization analysis, a causal relationship was established between 19 gut microbiota and psoriasis. Furthermore, the reverse MR study revealed causality between psoriasis and 13 gut microbiota. Notably, no substantial heterogeneity of instrumental variables or horizontal pleiotropy was observed.

Conclusion: This research suggests a potential genetic association and causal nexus between gut microorganisms and psoriasis, indicating potential implications for the clinical management and therapy of psoriasis. Additional observational studies with a larger population sample size and animal model experiments are imperative to fully elucidate this association's underlying mechanisms.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization study; bidirectional; causal association; gut microbiota; psoriasis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Overview of present MR analyses and assumptions. GWAS, genome wide association study; SNP, single nucleotide polymorphisms; MR, Mendelian randomization.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Overview of the causal role of gut microbiota and psoriasis in MR analysis (outer section) and reverse MR analysis (inner section). The red color indicates statistical significance (p < 1 × 10–5). ME, MR-Egger method; WM, weighted median method; IVW, inverse variance weighted method.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Forest plots of gut microbiota taxa associated with psoriasis identified by IVW method. SNP, single-nucleotide polymorphism; OR, odds ratio; CI, confidence Interval.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was supported by the Fourth Batch of Jiangsu Provincial Famous Traditional Chinese Medicine Experts’ Inheritance Studio Construction Project.

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