Psychological Distress and Meniere's Disease: A Bidirectional Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study

This study is aim to explore the causal relationship between anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and Meniere's disease (MD).

Two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses.

IEU, FinnGen, CTG, and UKB databases.

The genome-wide association studies data for anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and MD involved over 357,957 participants. MR was performed to explore relationships between anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and MD. Sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the robustness of the MR results. Reverse MR was used to exclude the possibility of reverse causality. Finally, multivariate MR was performed to explore the collinear relationships between neuroticism subclusters.

MR results showed that anxiety and depression are not causes of MD, nor does MD cause anxiety and depression. Elevated neuroticism sum score is a cause of anxiety, depression, and MD, but MD does not lead to an increase in the level of neuroticism sum score. Further analysis showed that the 5 subclusters of neuroticism often feel lonely, mood often goes up and down, often feel fed-up, feelings easily hurt, and sensitivity to environmental stress and adversity are causes of MD. Multivariate MR analysis results suggested that the 5 neuroticism subclusters have a collinear relationship.

Anxiety and depression are not causative factors of MD, and vice versa. Elevated neuroticism levels serve as a shared causative factor for anxiety, depression, and MD. Identification and effective management of neuroticism is a potential target for preventing and treating MD.