Abstract
Objective To search out whether or not years of education is causally related to rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Method We conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomisation (MR) analysis employing inverse-variance weighted (IVW), weighted median and MR-Egger regression analysis. We chose statistic data of years of education from the UK Biobank genome-wide association studies (GWASs) (n=293 723) as the exposure and a meta-analysis of GWASs of RA with autoantibody (n=5539) and European controls (n=20 169) as the outcome. Results We selected a total of 49 single nucleotide polymorphisms as instrumental variables (IVs). The IVW method instructed an inverse causative relationship between years of education and RA (β=- 0.039, SE=0.283, p=0.008). MR-Egger regression test showed that directional pleiotropy seems not to bias the MR results (intercept=0.028; p=0.358). MR-Egger analysis demonstrated no causative relationship between RA and years of education (β=- 2.320, SE=1.709, p=0.181). However, the weighted median approach indicated a causative association between RA and years of education (β=-0.950, SE=0.355, p=0.008). Conclusions The MR analysis supported a potential inverse causative relationship between years of education and development of RA.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 378-381 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Postgraduate Medical Journal |
Volume | 95 |
Issue number | 1125 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 Jul 1 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding This study was supported by the Bio and Medical Technology Development Program of the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2017M3A9B4050335), Republic of Korea.
Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.
Keywords
- educational attainment
- mendelian randomization
- rheumatoid arthritis
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine