AUTHOR=Jin Bilun , Wang Pengfei , Liu Peiqi , Wang Yijie , Guo Yi , Wang Chenxu , Jia Yue , Zou Rui , Dong Shaojie , Niu Lin 

TITLE=Association between periodontitis and endometriosis: a bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Endocrinology

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2024.1271351

DOI=10.3389/fendo.2024.1271351

ISSN=1664-2392

ABSTRACT=A potential association between periodontitis and endometriosis has been indicated in previous observational studies. Nevertheless, the causal link between these two disorders has not been clarified.Based on publicly available genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary datasets, we conducted a bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) study to investigate the relationship between periodontitis and endometriosis and its subtypes. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) strongly associated with candidate exposures at the genome-wide significance level (P < 5 × 10 -8) were selected as instrumental variables (IVs). The inverse variance weighted regression (IVW) was performed to estimate the causal effect of periodontitis on endometriosis. We further conducted two sensitivity analyses, MR-Egger and weighted median, to test the validity of our findings. The main results were replicated via data from UK Biobank. Finally, a reverse MR analysis was performed to evaluate the possibility of reverse causality. The IVW method suggested that periodontitis was positively associated with endometriosis of pelvic peritoneum (OR = 1.079, 95% CI = 1.016 to 1.146, P = 0.014). No causal association was indicated between periodontitis and other subtypes of endometriosis. In reversed analyses, no causal association of endometriosis or subtypes on periodontitis was found. Our study provided genetic evidence on the causal relationship between periodontitis and endometriosis of pelvic peritoneum. More studies are necessary to explore the underlying mechanisms.