Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Sep 10:14:1419020.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1419020. eCollection 2024.

Mendelian randomization provides causal association between COVID-19 and thyroid cancer: insights from a multi-cancer analysis

Shuhong Li  1 , Zedong Du  1 , Hui Ma  1 , Liang Cai  1 , Xiao Liu  1 , Jie He  2
Affiliations

Mendelian randomization provides causal association between COVID-19 and thyroid cancer: insights from a multi-cancer analysis

Shuhong Li et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has caused over 600 million confirmed infections and more than 6.8 million deaths worldwide, with ongoing implications for human health. COVID-19 has been extensively documented to have extrapulmonary manifestations due to the widespread expression of necessary ACE2 receptors in the human body. Nevertheless, the association between COVID-19 and cancer risk remains inadequately explored. This study employs Mendelian randomization (MR) methods to examine the causal relationship between genetic variations associated with COVID-19 and the risk of developing cancer. The findings indicate that COVID-19 has negligible impact on most cancer risks. Interestingly, a higher COVID-19 impact is associated with a decreased risk of thyroid cancer. In summary, our findings demonstrate a genetic correlation between COVID-19 and thyroid cancer, contributing to our understanding of the interplay between COVID-19 and cancer risk.

Keywords: COVID-19; Mendelian randomization; SARS-CoV-2; cancer risk; thyroid.

PubMed Disclaimer

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
Workflow of this study.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of COVID-19 susceptibility effects on multi-cancer risk.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot of COVID-19 hospitalization effects on multi-cancer risk.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plot of COVID-19 severity effects on multi-cancer risk.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The MR analysis results between COVID-19 and multi-cancer risk are robust. scatter plot of casual estimate for MR test between COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalization and severity on thyroid cancer (A-C); forest plot of single SNP effect of COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalization and severity on thyroid cancer (D-F).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Sensitivity analysis indicates that the MR analysis was not affected by heterogeneity and pleiotropy. Funnel plot of single SNP effect (A-C); forest plot of leave-one-out analysis (D-F).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) situation reports (2023). Available online at: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situatio.... (Accessed October 07, 2023)
    1. Dong E, Du H, Gardner L. An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. Lancet Infect Dis. (2020) 20:533–4. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30120-1 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. CSSEGISandData . COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (2023). Available online at: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19 (Accessed October 6, 2023).
    1. Wu Z, McGoogan JM. Characteristics of and important lessons from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in China: summary of a report of 72 314 cases from the chinese center for disease control and prevention. JAMA. (2020) 323:1239–42. doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.2648 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ashraf UM, Abokor AA, Edwards JM, Waigi EW, Royfman RS, Hasan SA-M, et al. . SARS-CoV-2, ACE2 expression, and systemic organ invasion. Physiol Genomics. (2021) 53:7. doi: 10.1152/physiolgenomics.00087.2020 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

LinkOut - more resources