Wang Zheng, Pan Mengshu, Zhu Jie, Liu Changhong
Department of Critical Care Medicine, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, 250021, Shandong, China.
Primary Care Department, Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230000, Anhui, China.
Discov Oncol. 2025 Jan 16;16(1):54. doi: 10.1007/s12672-025-01785-z.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a malignant tumor that seriously endangering health, has aroused widespread concern in the field of public health. Previous researches have noted the relationships between immune cells and HCC, but the causal relationship was uncertain.
In this study, a bidirectional two sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was utilized to access the causal relationship between immune cell characteristics and HCC. According to the open-access data, we investigated the causal relationship between 731 immune cell characteristics and HCC risk.
After screening by IVW approach, increased levels of 8 immune traits and reduced levels of 7 immune traits could lead to changes in HCC risk. These 15 immune cells were distributed in the Monocyte (4 cells), Treg panel (4 cells), TBNK (3 cells), Maturation stages of T cell panel (3 cells), and cDC panel (1 cells). Furthermore, HCC was identified to have causal effects on 21 immunophenotypes. Among these immune cells, hepatocarcinogenesis had the greatest impact on CD4 on EM CD4 + and CD33 on Mo MDSC.
This study enhances our comprehension of the interaction between immune cells and HCC risk, furnishing novel avenues to explore the mechanisms of HCC.
肝细胞癌（HCC）是一种严重危害健康的恶性肿瘤，已引起公共卫生领域的广泛关注。以往研究已注意到免疫细胞与HCC之间的关系，但因果关系尚不确定。
在本研究中，采用双向双样本孟德尔随机化（MR）分析来探讨免疫细胞特征与HCC之间的因果关系。根据公开数据，我们研究了731种免疫细胞特征与HCC风险之间的因果关系。
经逆方差加权（IVW）方法筛选后，8种免疫特征水平升高和7种免疫特征水平降低可导致HCC风险发生变化。这15种免疫细胞分布在单核细胞（4种）、调节性T细胞组（4种）、TBNK（3种）、T细胞组成熟阶段（3种）和浆细胞样树突状细胞组（1种）中。此外，已确定HCC对21种免疫表型有因果效应。在这些免疫细胞中，肝癌发生对EM CD4+上的CD4和Mo MDSC上的CD33影响最大。
本研究增强了我们对免疫细胞与HCC风险之间相互作用的理解，为探索HCC的发病机制提供了新途径。
