Genetic susceptibility to COVID‐19 may increase the risk of erectile dysfunction: A two‐sample Mendelian randomization study

• Published in: Andrologia Vol. 54; no. 10; pp. e14527 - n/a
• Main Authors: Zhang, Kun, Gao, Hengxing, Chen, Mingwei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.11.2022; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: Causality; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Erectile dysfunction; Genetic analysis; Genomes; Mendelian randomization; Original; Pleiotropy; Population; Single-nucleotide polymorphism; Susceptibility
• ISSN: 0303-4569; 1439-0272; 1439-0272
• DOI: 10.1111/and.14527

Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID‐19) and erectile dysfunction (ED) have been linked in some observational research, but the causality of this association in the European population is uncertain. Therefore, the research intended to investigate the causality of susceptibility to COVID‐19 on ED. We used Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis for this research. The subjects were from two genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) of the European population, including COVID‐19 (14,134 cases and 1,284,876 controls) and ED (6175 cases and 217,630 controls). We utilized the inverse variance‐weighted (IVW) to evaluate the causality of COVID‐19 genetic susceptibility on ED. Heterogeneity and pleiotropy were determined using the Cochran's Q test and MR‐Egger regression. The robustness of the findings was verified using the Leave‐one‐out method. We obtained six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as COVID‐19 genetic instrumental variables (IVs), and there was no significant pleiotropy, heterogeneity or bias in these IVs. MR analysis revealed the causality of genetic susceptibility to COVID‐19 on elevated risk of ED (ORIVW = 1.235, 95% CI: 1.044–1.462, p < 0.05). The present study suggested the causality of genetic susceptibility to COVID‐19 on elevated ED risk among the European population. Therefore, in order to decrease the ED risk, the European population ought to positively prevent COVID‐19.