Association between periodontitis and endometriosis: a bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

Bilun Jin, Pengfei Wang, Peiqi Liu, Yijie Wang, Yi Guo, Chenxu Wang, Yue Jia, Rui Zou, Shaojie Dong, Lin Niu
Frontiers in endocrinology · 2024 · vol. 15 , pp. 1271351 · doi:10.3389/fendo.2024.1271351 · PMID:38487346 · PMC10937447 · W4392292485
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This Mendelian randomization study found genetic evidence that periodontitis causally increases the risk of endometriosis of the pelvic peritoneum, but not other endometriosis subtypes, with no evidence of reverse causality.

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⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-09 ⓘ

This paper used publicly available genome-wide association study summary statistics to perform a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis assessing causal relationships between periodontitis and endometriosis, including endometriosis subtypes, with replication via UK Biobank. Using genome-wide significant SNPs as instrumental variables and estimating effects with inverse-variance weighting plus sensitivity analyses (MR-Egger and weighted median, heterogeneity, pleiotropy, and leave-one-out), they found that genetic liability to periodontitis was positively associated with endometriosis of the pelvic peritoneum (OR 1.079, 95% CI 1.016–1.146), while no causal effects were seen for other endometriosis subtypes. In the reverse analysis, there was no evidence that endometriosis (or its subtypes) causally increased risk of periodontitis. The paper relates directly to endometriosis by providing genetic evidence for a causal link between periodontitis and endometriosis of the pelvic peritoneum.

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Abstract

Introduction A potential association between periodontitis and endometriosis has been indicated in previous observational studies. Nevertheless, the causal link between these two disorders has not been clarified. Methods Based on publicly available genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary datasets, we conducted a bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) study to investigate the relationship between periodontitis and endometriosis and its subtypes. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) strongly associated with candidate exposures at the genome-wide significance level ( P < 5 × 10 −8 ) were selected as instrumental variables (IVs). The inverse variance-weighted regression (IVW) was performed to estimate the causal effect of periodontitis on endometriosis. We further conducted two sensitivity analyses, MR-Egger and weighted median, to test the validity of our findings. The main results were replicated via data from the UK Biobank. Finally, a reverse MR analysis was performed to evaluate the possibility of reverse causality. Results The IVW method suggested that periodontitis was positively associated with endometriosis of the pelvic peritoneum (OR = 1.079, 95% CI = 1.016 to 1.146, P = 0.014). No causal association was indicated between periodontitis and other subtypes of endometriosis. In reversed analyses, no causal association between endometriosis or its subtypes and periodontitis was found. Conclusions Our study provided genetic evidence on the causal relationship between periodontitis and endometriosis of the pelvic peritoneum. More studies are necessary to explore the underlying mechanisms.

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Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis Periodontitis

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