The following is a summary of “Association of major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with thyroid cancer: a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomized study,” published in the April 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Qiu al.
The link between common mental health conditions like major depressive disorder (MDD), schizophrenia (SCZ), bipolar disorder (BD), and thyroid cancer is an area of ongoing study.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study examining whether MDD, SCZ, and BD directly influence the risk of thyroid cancer.
They utilized summary statistics from large-scale genome-wide association studies to identify genetic variant loci linked with MDD, SCZ, BD, and thyroid cancer as IVs. The IVs were quality-controlled and clustered. Three MR methods were used to assess causality: IVW, MR–Egger regression, and WME. Heterogeneity and multivariate tests were conducted to validate the IVs.
The results showed that in two-sample bidirectional MR analysis, MDD may be positively causally associated with thyroid cancer risk. IVW analysis (OR = 3.956, 95% CI = 1.177–13.299; P=0.026) and the WME method (OR = 5.563, 95% CI = 0.998–31.008; P=0.050) confirmed this association. SCZ correlated with thyroid cancer susceptibility (OR = 1.532, 95% CI = 1.123–2.088; P=0.007). WME analysis (OR = 1.599, 95% CI = 1.014–2.521; P=0.043) also supported this finding. No BD-thyroid cancer link. Reverse MR analysis showed no significant MDD, SCZ, or BD-thyroid cancer causal links (P>0.05), ruling out reverse causality.
Investigators concluded a potential link between MDD and SCZ with increased thyroid cancer risk while also finding a correlation between BD and the disease.
Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-024-05682-7
