ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cardiovasc. Med.
Sec. Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2025.1415263
Genetically Predicted Ankylosing Spondylitis Increases the Risk of Heart Failure, A Mendelian Randomization Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 2Department of Cardiology, Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, Fujian, China
- 3Department of Pathology, Fujian Provincial Cancer Hospital, Fuzhou, China
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Observational studies have indicated a potential association between ankylosing spondylitis and elevated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. It is still uncertain whether this association reflects causal associations. Therefore, we conducted this Mendelian randomization to investigate the causal relationship between ankylosing spondylitis and CVD.We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis to establish a causal relationship between ankylosing spondylitis and the risk of six prevalent CVDs: hypertension, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and peripheral artery disease. Furthermore, multivariate Mendelian randomization was employed to determine the influence of confounding factors.Genetically predicted ankylosing spondylitis increased the risk of heart failure according to the Mendelian randomization analysis (OR=1.02; 95%CI=1.00-1.04; p=0.030). Multivariate analysis results indicated that the causal relationship between ankylosing spondylitis and heart failure risk remained significant after adjusting for hypertension, diabetes, smoking, body mass index, and pulse wave reflection index.The associations diminished and lost significance after adjusting for pulse wave peak to peak time and pulse wave arterial stiffness index.Genetically predicted ankylosing spondylitis increased the risk of heart failure and the causality may partly be mediated by increased arterial stiffness.
Keywords: ankylosing spondylitis, Mendelian randomization, cardiovascular disease, Heart Failure, The causal link
Received: 26 Apr 2024; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Wang, Lin, You, Zheng, Wang, Lin, Peng and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Feng Peng, First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
Dan Hu, Department of Pathology, Fujian Provincial Cancer Hospital, Fuzhou, China
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