The effect of rosacea on neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the potential causal relationships between rosacea and Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety disorders, and depression with MR analysis. Genetic data for rosacea and the four neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders were sourced from GWAS databases. After completing stringent quality control procedures, SNPs meeting significance thresholds were selected as IVs. Our primary statistical analysis was conducted by IVW approach. To investigate the robustness of results, heterogeneity tests, sensitivity analyses, and pleiotropy assessments were conducted. Reverse MR analyses were subsequently carried out to further substantiate the causal relationships. The present study discovered a positive correlation between rosacea and an elevated risk of depression (OR = 1.0015, 95% CI = 1.0002-1.0027, P = 0.02). There is no causal evidence to support a connection between rosacea and Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, or anxiety disorders. Reverse MR analyses indicated no causal associations between these four disorders and the risk of rosacea. The findings reveal that individuals with rosacea may have an elevated risk of depression.

Keywords: Depression; Mendelian randomization analysis; Neurodegenerative disease; Neuropsychiatric disease; Rosacea.

Fig. 1

The flowchart of the MR analysis. IVs instrumental variables, MR Mendelian randomization

Fig. 2

Forest plot (A), leave-one-out analysis (B), scatter plot (C) and funnel plot (D) of the causal effects of rosacea on depression

Fig. 3

MR to estimate the causal relationship of rosacea to neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders. SNPs single nucleotide-polymorphisms, OR odds ratio, CI confidence interval