A causal relationship between educational attainment and risk of infectious diseases: A Mendelian randomisation study

Previous observational studies have investigated the association between educational attainment and sepsis, pneumonia, and urinary tract infections (UTIs). However, their findings have been susceptible to reverse causality and confounding factors. Furthermore, no study has examined the effect of educational level on the risk of infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissue (SSTIs). Thus, we aimed to evaluate the causal relationships between educational level and the risk of four infectious diseases using Mendelian randomisation (MR) techniques.

We used univariable MR analysis to investigate the causal associations between educational attainment (years of schooling (n = 766 345) and holding college or university degree (n = 334 070)) and four infectious diseases (sepsis (n = 486 484), pneumonia (n = 486 484), UTIs (n = 463 010), and SSTIs (n = 218 792)). We included genetic instrumental variables with a genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10^-8) in the study. We used inverse variance-weighted estimation in the primary analysis and explored the stability of the results using multivariable MR analysis after adjusting for smoking, alcohol consumption, and body mass index.

Genetically predicted years of schooling were associated with a reduced risk of sepsis (odds ratio (OR) = 0.763; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.668-0.870, P = 5.525 × 10^-5), pneumonia (OR = 0.637; 95% CI = 0.577-0.702, P = 1.875 × 10^-19), UTIs (OR = 0.995; 95% CI = 0.993-0.997, P = 1.229 × 10^-5), and SSTIs (OR = 0.696; 95% CI = 0.605-0.801, P = 4.034 × 10^-7). We observed consistent results for the correlation between qualifications and infectious diseases. These findings remained stable in the multivariable MR analyses.

Our findings suggest that increased educational attainment may be causally associated with a decreased risk of sepsis, pneumonia, UTIs, and SSTIs.