Clinical, cosmetic and investigational dermatology
Causal Effects of Inflammatory Proteins and Metabolites on Skin Soft Tissue Infections: Mendelian Randomization and Mediation Analysis
By Tang J, Chen Y, Ji Y and 3 others.
Abstract
Introduction
The pathogenesis of skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) remains incompletely understood, particularly regarding the causal relationships between circulating inflammatory proteins (CIPs), metabolites, and infection susceptibility. Mendelian randomization (MR) provides an approach to investigate potential causal associations while reducing confounding and reverse causation.
Methods
We conducted a bidirectional two-sample MR study integrating proteomic and metabolomic data. Genetic instruments for 91 CIPs were obtained from a proteomic GWAS (14,824 participants), SSTI summary statistics were obtained from the FinnGen consortium (R10 release), and 1400 plasma metabolites were analyzed from the GWAS Catalog. The inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary analysis, with sensitivity analyses performed to evaluate robustness. MR-based mediation analysis was conducted to assess metabolite-mediated pathways.