Reverse causal relationship between periodontitis and shortened telomere length: Bidirectional two-sample Mendelian...

Area of Science:

• Genetics
• Periodontology
• Molecular Biology

Background:

• Observational studies suggest an association between reduced telomere length (TL) and chronic periodontitis.
• The causal direction between TL and periodontitis remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the bidirectional causal relationship between periodontitis and TL using a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study.

Main Methods:

• A two-sample bidirectional MR analysis utilized publicly available genome-wide association study (GWAS) data.
• Inverse variance weighting (IVW) was the primary analysis method.
• Sensitivity analyses included leave-one-out, MR-Egger, weighted median, and MR-PRESSO to assess pleiotropy.

Main Results:

• Reverse MR analysis indicated that genetically predicted short TL is causally associated with an increased risk of periodontitis (IVW OR: 1.0601, P=0.0021).
• Forward MR analysis showed no significant causal effect of periodontitis on TL (IVW P=0.7242).
• Sensitivity analyses did not detect significant pleiotropy.

Conclusions:

• The study demonstrates a reverse causal link: shortened TL increases periodontitis risk.
• Periodontitis does not appear to cause shortened TL.
• Future research should explore the role of cell senescence in this relationship.