Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China.
Andrologia. 2022 Nov;54(10):e14527. doi: 10.1111/and.14527. Epub 2022 Jul 12.
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 (OR = 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.
新型冠状病毒病 19（COVID-19）和勃起功能障碍（ED）在一些观察性研究中存在关联，但欧洲人群中这种关联的因果关系尚不确定。因此，本研究旨在探讨 COVID-19 易感性对 ED 的因果关系。我们使用孟德尔随机化（MR）分析进行了这项研究。研究对象来自欧洲人群的两项全基因组关联研究（GWAS），包括 COVID-19（14134 例病例和 1284876 例对照）和 ED（6175 例病例和 217630 例对照）。我们利用逆方差加权（IVW）评估 COVID-19 遗传易感性对 ED 的因果关系。采用 Cochran's Q 检验和 MR-Egger 回归来确定异质性和多效性。使用Leave-one-out 方法验证结果的稳健性。我们获得了六个作为 COVID-19 遗传工具变量（IVs）的单核苷酸多态性（SNPs），这些 IVs 中没有明显的多效性、异质性或偏差。MR 分析表明，COVID-19 遗传易感性与 ED 风险升高存在因果关系（OR=1.235，95%CI：1.044-1.462，p<0.05）。本研究提示 COVID-19 遗传易感性与欧洲人群 ED 风险升高存在因果关系。因此，为了降低 ED 风险，欧洲人群应该积极预防 COVID-19。
