Genetic analyses reveal association between rosacea and cardiovascular diseases

Previous studies have shown that patients with rosacea tend to have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, the potential causal relationship between genetic susceptibility to rosacea and the risk of CVDs remains unclear. Based on summary statistics from publicly available genome-wide association studies (GWASs), we detected the genetic association between rosacea and CVDs by a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. The inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary analysis, while weighted median (WM) and MR-Egger were applied as complementary methods. For sensitivity analyses, we applied Cochran's Q test, the intercept of MR-Egger, MR-Pleiotropy Residual Sum and Outlier (MR-PRESSO), funnel plot, and leave-one-out analysis. The MR analysis revealed that rosacea was associated with an elevated risk of hypertension (HTN) (OR = 1.0032, 95% CI [1.0001-1.0063], P = 0.04). However, no casual relationship was found between rosacea and risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) (OR = 1.0099, 95% CI [0.9823-1.0382], P = 0.49), coronary artery disease (CAD) (OR = 1.0138, 95% CI [0.9824-1.0462], P = 0.39), heart failure (HF) (OR = 0.9965, 95% CI [0.9671-1.0268], P = 0.82), ischemic stroke (IS) (OR = 0.9933, 95% CI [0.9545-1.0337], P = 0.74), or myocardial infarction (MI) (OR = 1.0001, 95% CI [0.9988-1.0013], P = 0.92). In the sensitivity analysis, significant heterogeneity was revealed in the MI subgroup according to the Cochran's Q test. Other sensitivity analyses indicated the stability of our results. Reverse MR analysis showed no significant genetic effect of cardiovascular disease on rosacea risk. We are the first to use MR analysis to explore the casual relationship between rosacea and the risk of various CVDs, revealing an increased risk of HTN in patients with rosacea.