The causal relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and rheumatic disease: A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study.

Abstract

Background and objective: Multiple studies have shown a substantial association between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and rheumatic disease. However, traditional studies are susceptible to confounding factors or reverse causal relationships, and the exact causal relationship still needs to be clearly defined. This study aims to use a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to investigate the causal association between OSA and rheumatoid immune diseases.

Methods: We conducted a two-sample bidirectional MR analysis by using large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) summary statistics to investigate whether there is a causal relationship between OSA and rheumatic disease. Inverse variance weighted (IVW) was used as the primary analysis approach, supplemented by MR-Egger and Weighted median methods. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to ensure the robustness of the results.

Results: The MR predicted ankylosing spondylitis (AS) was associated with risk of OSA (IVW: OR = 1.0239, 95% CI = 1.0086 to 1.0394, P = 0.0021; MR-Egger: OR = 1.0374, 95% CI = 1.0089 to 1.0668, P = 0.0326; weighted median: OR = 1.0287, 95% CI = 1.0109 to 1.0467, P = 0.0014). However, no bidirectional causal association was found between other rheumatic disease and OSA. The sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the results.

Conclusions: Our analysis suggests a potential causal relationship between AS and OSA. There was no direct causal relationship between OSA and other rheumatic disease. We need more experimental research on specific pathological and physiological mechanisms in the future.