Association between autoimmunity-related disorders and prostate cancer: A Mendelian randomization study

• Published in: Cancer pathogenesis and therapy Vol. 2; no. 4; pp. 292 - 298
• Main Authors: Chen, Peixian, Wang, Yue, Xiong, Zhi, Luo, Tianlong, Lai, Yiming, Zhong, Haitao, Peng, Shirong, Zhuang, Ruilin, Li, Kaiwen, Huang, Hai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.10.2024; Department of Urology, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510120, China%National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, Beijing 102629, China%Department of Urology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Guangdong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Urological Diseases, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510120, China%Department of Urology, The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Qingyuan People's Hospital, Qingyuan, Guangdong 511518, China; Elsevier
• Subjects: Autoimmunity-related diseases; Mendelian randomization; Potential relationship; Prostate cancer; Autoimmunity-related diseases; Mendelian randomization; Potential relationship; Prostate cancer
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cpt.2024.03.002
• ISSN: 2949-7132; 2097-2563

Although many epidemiological studies and meta-analyses have reported an association between autoimmune disorders and prostate cancer, none has reported a clear correlation or the direction of the association. The purpose of our study was to explore the potential relationship between autoimmunity-related disorders and prostate cancer using Mendelian randomization (MR). We retrieved literature from PubMed using the keywords “autoimmune disorder” AND “prostate cancer” to find more clues on the correlation between prostate cancer and autoimmunity-related disorder. Based on this literature search, we selected 16 autoimmunity-related disorders that had genome-wide association study (GWAS) data and may be associated with prostate cancer. The inverse variance weighting (IVW) method was applied as our primary analysis for two-sample MR and multivariate MR analysis to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). We further verified the robustness of our conclusions using a series of sensitivity analyses. The autoimmunity-related diseases selected include rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, coxarthrosis, gonarthrosis, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis, asthma, type 1 diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune hyperthyroidism, psoriatic arthropathies, and polymyalgia rheumatica. The results of inverse variance weighting (IVW suggested that six diseases were associated with the development of prostate cancer. The three diseases that may increase the risk of prostate cancer are rheumatoid arthritis (P = 0.001), coxarthrosis (P < 0.001), and gonarthrosis (P = 0.008). The three possible protective factors against prostate cancer are primary sclerosing cholangitis (P = 0.001), autoimmune hyperthyroidism (P = 0.011), and psoriatic arthropathies (P = 0.001). Horizontal pleiotropy was not observed in the MR-Egger test. Our findings provide predictive genetic evidence for an association between autoimmune disorders and prostate cancer. Further research is needed to explore the underlying mechanisms of comorbidities at the molecular level. [Display omitted] •The association between autoimmunity-related disorders and prostate cancer was explored using Mendelian randomization (MR).•MR is an epidemiological analysis method used to verify etiological hypotheses using genome-wide association study (GWAS) data.•The results suggested a correlation between six diseases and prostate cancer. Further research is needed to explore the underlying mechanisms of comorbidities at the molecular level.