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. 2024 Apr 26;19(4):e0294095.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294095. eCollection 2024.

Mendelian randomization study of whole blood viscosity and cardiovascular diseases

Youngjune Bhak  1 , Albert Tenesa  1   2
Affiliations

Mendelian randomization study of whole blood viscosity and cardiovascular diseases

Youngjune Bhak et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Aims: Association between whole blood viscosity (WBV) and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been reported. However, the causal relationship between WBV and CVD remains not thoroughly investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the causal relation between WBV and CVD.

Methods: Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) was employed, with inverse variance weighting (IVW) as the primary method, to investigate the casual relationship between WBV and CVD. The calculated WBV and medical records of 378,210 individuals participating in the UK Biobank study were divided into halves and analyzed.

Results: The means of calculated WBVs were 16.9 (standard deviation: 0.8) and 55.1 (standard deviation: 17.2) for high shear rate (HSR) and low shear rate (LSR), respectively. 37,859 (10.0%) major cardiovascular events (MACE) consisted of 23,894 (6.3%) cases of myocardial infarction (MI), 9,245 (2.4%) cases of ischemic stroke, 10,377 (2.7%) cases of revascularization, and 5,703 (1.5%) cases of coronary heart disease-related death. In the MR analysis, no evidence was found indicating a causal effect of WBV on MACE (IVW p-value for HSR = 0.81, IVW p-value for LSR = 0.47), MI (0.92, 0.83), ischemic stroke (0.52, 0.74), revascularization (0.71, 0.54), and coronary heart disease-related death (0.83, 0.70). The lack of sufficient evidence for causality persisted in other MR methods, including weighted median and MR-egger.

Conclusions: The Mendelian randomization analysis conducted in this study does not support a causal relationship between calculated WBV and CVD.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Mendelian randomisation analysis between WBV and the risk of cardiovascular events.
Panel A shows mendelian randomisation results for the causal effect of HSR to the risk of cardiovascular events, and panel B shows mendelian randomisation results for the causal effect of LSR to the risk of cardiovascular events. The boxes represent causal estimates and the lines represent 95% confidence intervals. MACE denotes major cardiovascular event, MI myocardial infarction, IVW inverse-variance weighted, WM weighted median.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Artificial Intelligence and Multimorbidity: Clustering in Individuals, Space and Clinical Context (AIM-CISC) grant NIHR202639. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.