Investigating the causal relationship between inflammatory bowel disease and simple appendicitis using Mendelian randomization

Abstract

Abstract The relationship between simple appendicitis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is not clear. In this study, we approach the issue from a genetic perspective, using Mendelian randomization (MR) tools to explore the potential causal connection between the two. We used GWAS data from 12,882 IBD patients (21,770 controls), 5956 crohn’s disease (CD) patients (14,927 controls), 6968 ulcerative colitis (UC) patients (20,464 controls), and 4604 simple appendicitis patients (481,880 controls). These statistical data were derived from a large-scale whole-genome association study of individuals with European ancestry. The primary analytical method for inferring the causal relationship between the conditions involved the use of the Inverse Variance Weighting (IVW) method as the main approach for bidirectional MR analysis. The MR analysis results predicted IBD was associated with a lower risk of simple appendicitis (OR: 0.947 (0.911, 0.984), p = 0.005). The results for CD (OR: 0.948 (0.916, 0.981), p = 0.002) and UC (OR: 0.954 (0.917, 0.992), p = 0.020) are consistent with this finding. In the reverse MR analysis, there is no significant association between simple appendicitis and the occurrence of IBD (p > 0.05), and the same holds true for CD and UC (p > 0.05). Our MR study results suggest a potential negative causal effect of IBD on the occurrence of simple appendicitis. Conversely, there does not appear to be a significant causal relationship between simple appendicitis and the risk of developing IBD.

Keywords

• Inflammatory bowel disease
• Crohn’s disease
• Ulcerative colitis
• Appendicitis
• Mendelian randomization