Iron Status, Thyroid Dysfunction, and Iron Deficiency Anemia: A Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study

Given the clinical association between thyroid dysfunction and iron deficiency anemia (IDA), as well as their shared association with iron status, this study aimed to investigate the causal relationship between iron status and thyroid dysfunction, while also examining the risk of IDA in relation to thyroid dysfunction.

A two-sample mendelian randomization (MR) study was conducted to identify the causal relationship of iron status on thyroid dysfunction, as well as thyroid dysfunction on IDA. Large-scale European population-based genome-wide association study databases were utilized (Genetics of Iron Status consortium, ThyroidOmics consortium, FinnGen consortium, and UK Biobank). Inverse variance-weighted (IVW) was used as the main analysis. In addition, we used weighted median and MR-Egger to enhance the robustness. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the robustness of MR results.

The IVW estimates did not reveal any significant causal relationship between serum iron status markers and thyroid dysfunction. However, a significant causal relationship was observed between hypothyroidism and IDA (odds ratio [OR] = 1.101, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.048-1.157, p < 0.001). Repeated analyses also demonstrated a similar trend (OR = 1.023, 95% CI = 1.011-1.035, p < 0.001). Sensitivity analysis supported that the MR estimates were robust.

In our MR study, an upregulation of the hypothyroidism-associated gene was found to be significantly associated with an elevated risk of IDA in the European population. These findings may offer novel therapeutic insights for clinicians managing patients with hypothyroidism, IDA, or their comorbidities.