Causal effect of COVID-19 on longitudinal volumetric changes in subcortical structures: A mendelian randomization study
Zirui Wang,
Siqi Wang,
Haonan Li,
Mengdong Wang,
Xingyu Zhang,
Jiayuan Xu,
Qiang Xu,
Junping Wang
Affiliations
Zirui Wang
Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
Siqi Wang
Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
Haonan Li
Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
Mengdong Wang
Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
Xingyu Zhang
Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
Jiayuan Xu
Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
Qiang Xu
Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
Junping Wang
Corresponding author. to: Junping Wang Full address: Department of Radiology, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, No. 154, Anshan Road, Heping District, Tianjin 300052, China.; Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China
A few observational neuroimaging investigations have reported subcortical structural changes in the individuals who recovered from the coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), but the causal relationships between COVID-19 and longitudinal changes of subcortical structures remain unclear. We performed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to estimate putative causal relationships between three COVID-19 phenotypes (susceptibility, hospitalization, and severity) and longitudinal volumetric changes of seven subcortical structures derived from MRI. Our findings demonstrated that genetic liability to SARS-CoV-2 infection had a great long-term impact on the volumetric reduction of subcortical structures, especially caudate. Our investigation may contribute in part to the understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying COVID-19-related neurological and neuropsychiatric sequelae.
