Causal associations between gut microbiota and chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Abstract Background Recent researches have increasingly indicated a strong correlation between the gut microbiota and chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS). Nevertheless, the impact of gut microbiota on CP/CPPS still requires further elucidation. Methods Employing the summary statistics provided by the MiBioGen consortium, we executed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. The study involved 18,340 participants and considered gut microbiota as the instrumental variable. Chronic prostatitis summary statistics, representing 500 cases and 208,308 controls, were extracted from the GWAS Catalog release data as the disease outcome. Various methods, including weighted inverse variance, MR-Egger and weighted median, were employed to assess how gut microbiota interact and correlate with CP/CPPS. Sensitivity analysis was used to eliminate heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy. Results Our findings, primarily derived from the IVW approach, provided evidence for a causal link between five categories of gut microbiota and CP/CPPS. Resultantly, the genus Christensenellaceae (OR = 0.39, 95% CI 0.17–0.87, P = 0.02), genus Eisenbergiella (OR = 0.62, 95% CI 0.40–0.97, P = 0.04), genus Hungatella (OR = 0.49, 95% CI 0.28–0.85, P = 0.01) and genus Terrisporobacter (OR = 0.39, 95% CI 0.20–0.75, P = 0.00) exhibited a protective impact on CP/CPPS, while family Prevotellaceae (OR = 1.78, 95% CI 1.01–3.15, P = 0.05) had the opposite effect. No notable heterogeneity of instrumental variables or horizontal pleiotropy was detected. Conclusions The findings of this study, which used a two-sample Mendelian randomization approach, indicate a causal link between gut microbiota and CP/CPPS. This could be valuable in offering fresh perspectives for additional mechanistic and clinical investigations of microbiota-related CP/CPPS. Nevertheless, additional randomized controlled trials are necessary for validation.

Keywords

• Gut microbiota
• Chronic prostatitis
• Mendelian randomization
• Causal associations