Anxiety-Depression and Meniere’s Disease: A Bidirectional Two Sample Mendelian Randomization Study - Abstract
Background: Meniere’s disease is an inner ear disorder characterized by vertigo, hearing loss, tinnitus and ear fullness. The cause of this disease is still
not fully understood. Anxiety and depression, as prevalent mental health problems worldwide, have a high co-occurrence rate with Meniere’s disease. Clinical
observations have shown that these two conditions often influence each other.
Objective: Our aim is to evaluate the causal relationship of anxiety-depression to Meniere’s disease using a bidirectional Two-sample Mendelian
randomization (MR) Study.
Methods: We collected data from seen doctors for nerves anxiety tension or depression and Meniere’s disease. Inverse variance weighted (IVW) MR
Analysis was used as the main analysis method. The causal relationship between anxiety-depression and Meniere’s disease was examined. Sensitivity analysis
was performed to assess heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy.
Results: Positive IVW-MR analysis showed that anxiety-depression were positively associated with the risk of Meniere’s disease (OR: 1.42, 95%CI: 1.15
1.76, P=0.001). Reverse IVW-MR analysis showed no significant causal relationship between Meniere’s disease and anxiety-depression (OR: 1.01, 95%CI:
1.00-1.03, P=0.121).
Conclusion: This MR Study suggests that anxiety-depression may contribute to the progression of Meniere’s disease. More experiments are needed to
confirm more conclusive conclusions.
Level of evidence: This was a Mendelian randomized study with a level of evidence second only to clinical randomized trials, and higher than cohort and
case-control studies.