The Association between Myopia and Anxiety: a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Objective

To investigate whether there is a causal relationship between generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and myopia.

Design

A bidirectional 2-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis.

Subjects

For the forward MR, 11 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with GAD were obtained from the FinnGen Research (5280 cases and 368 054 controls; European). For reverse MR, 253 SNPs associated with mean spherical equivalent (MSE) were derived from the UK Biobank (95 619 participants; European).

Methods

Summary-level data from the 2 genome-wide association studies were used to conduct bidirectional MR analyses. Four MR methodologies—inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR-Egger regression, weighted median, and weighted mode—were employed, with IVW serving as the primary analysis. Sensitivity analyses, including MR-Egger intercept and heterogeneity Q test, were performed.

Main Outcome Measures

The outcomes of the forward and reverse MR analyses were MSE and GAD, respectively.

Results

This study demonstrated a significant causal effect of GAD and myopia, suggesting individuals with GAD are at an elevated risk of more myopic MSE (IVW: β = −0.138; 95% confidence interval [CI] −0.221 to −0.056, P = 0.001). Conversely, we did not find evidence to support a causal effect of myopia on GAD (IVW: β = −0.017; 95% CI −0. 051 to −0.016, P = 0.308). Sensitivity analyses revealed no evidence of genetic confounding to bias the estimate of causal effect.

Conclusions

Our study demonstrates a significant causal relationship between GAD and a more myopic MSE, though the effect size was relatively small. These findings could be taken into consideration while implementing mental health interventions in children.

Financial Disclosure(s)

Proprietary or commercial disclosure may be found in the Footnotes and Disclosures at the end of this article.