![Sample our Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5944/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Medicine-Dentistry-Nursing-Allied-Health.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Background
Preeclampsia/eclampsia is a severe pregnancy-related disorder associated with hypertension and organ damage. While observational studies have suggested a link between maternal iron status and preeclampsia/eclampsia, the causal relationship remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic causality between iron status and preeclampsia/eclampsia using large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary data and Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis.
Methods
Summary data for the GWAS on preeclampsia/eclampsia and genetic markers related to iron status were obtained from the FinnGen Consortium and the IEU genetic databases. The “TwoSampleMR” software package in R was employed to test the genetic causality between these markers and preeclampsia/eclampsia. The inverse variance weighted (IVW) method was primarily used for MR analysis. Heterogeneity, horizontal pleiotropy, and potential outliers were evaluated for the MR analysis results.
Results
The random-effects IVW results showed that ferritin (OR = 1.11, 95% CI: .89–1.38, p = .341), serum iron (OR = .90, 95% CI: .75–1.09, p = .275), TIBC (OR = .98, 95% CI: .89–1.07, p = .613), and TSAT (OR = .94, 95% CI: .83–1.07, p = .354) have no genetic causal relationship with preeclampsia/eclampsia. There was no evidence of heterogeneity, horizontal pleiotropy, or possible outliers in our MR analysis (p > .05).
Conclusions
Our study did not detect a genetic causal relationship between iron status and preeclampsia/eclampsia. Nonetheless, this does not rule out a relationship between the two at other mechanistic levels.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all the contributions of authors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).