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Updated: Jul 9, 2025

Isolation and Flow Cytometric Analysis of Glioma-infiltrating Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells
Published on: November 28, 2015
Association between viral infections and glioma risk: a two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis
Sheng Zhong1, Wenzhuo Yang1, Zhiyun Zhang2
1State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Guangdong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, 510060, People's Republic of China.
Background:
Glioma is one of the leading types of brain tumor, but few etiologic factors of primary glioma have been identified. Previous observational research has shown an association between viral infection and glioma risk. In this study, we used Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to explore the direction and magnitude of the causal relationship between viral infection and glioma.
Methods:
We conducted a two-sample bidirectional MR analysis using genome-wide association study (GWAS) data. Summary statistics data of glioma were collected from the largest meta-analysis GWAS, involving 12,488 cases and 18,169 controls. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with exposures were used as instrumental variables to estimate the causal relationship between glioma and twelve types of viral infections from corresponding GWAS data. In addition, sensitivity analyses were performed.
Results:
After correcting for multiple tests and sensitivity analysis, we detected that genetically predicted herpes zoster (caused by Varicella zoster virus (VZV) infection) significantly decreased risk of low-grade glioma (LGG) development (OR = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.76-0.96, P = 0.01, FDR = 0.04). No causal effects of the other eleven viral infections on glioma and reverse causality were detected.
Conclusions:
This is one of the first and largest studies in this field. We show robust evidence supporting that genetically predicted herpes zoster caused by VZV infection reduces risk of LGG. The findings of our research advance understanding of the etiology of glioma.
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