Association between gastroesophageal reflux disease and venous thromboembolism: A Mendelian randomization study

The link between gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and venous thromboembolism (VTE) is not well understood. We performed a 2-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study to explore the potential causal effect of GERD on VTE. To explore the causal relationship between genetically predicted GERD and the risk of VTE, including pulmonary embolism (PE) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Three MR statistical techniques (inverse variance weighting (IVW), weighted median, and MR-Egger) were used to evaluate the potential causal relationship in genome-wide association studies. As part of the sensitivity analysis, we assessed heterogeneity and pleiotropy, and used the leave-one-SNP-out method to enhance the robustness of our findings. MR analysis results indicated that genetically predicted GERD was associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism (odds ratio [OR] = 1.239, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.146-1.339), PE (OR = 1.307, 95% CI = 1.156-1.477) and DVT (OR = 1.160, 95% CI = 1.012-1.330). Moreover, this study did not detect any heterogeneity or pleiotropy. GERD has a causal effect on venous thromboembolism, PE, and DVT.