Alanine transaminase is a risk factor for Acute pericarditis: A Mendelian Randomization study

Background: As a kind of cardiovascular disease, the association between acute pericarditis and ALT has not been reported, and whether there is a causal relationship between ALT and acute pericarditis is still unclear. Therefore, we aimed to explore the potential causal relationship between ALT and the risk of acute pericarditis using a Mendelian randomization (MR) design. Methods: We used large consortia of candidate gene summary data from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to explore a causal association between levels of liver enzymes (alanine transaminase) and acute pericarditis. The IEU OPEN GWAS Project data were used for the GWAS of liver enzyme levels and included 437,267 participants. The IEU OPEN GWAS Project data, which included 437,267 participants, were utilized for investigating liver enzyme levels. Similarly, these data were also analyzed to assess the occurrence of acute pericarditis among 337,199 participants of mainly European ancestry from various countries. The main method used in this study is inverse-variance weighted (IVW), supplemented by the weighted median method and MR-Egger method. Results: The results of IVW methods demonstrated that ALT was significantly associated with higher odds of acute pericarditis, with an odds ratio (OR) of 1.0016 (95%CI, 1.00004-1.00316; p<0.05). Furthermore, both funnel plots and MR-Egger results indicated no directional pleiotropic effects between ALT and acute pericarditis. Conclusions: Our study provided potential evidence for a causal association between ALT and acute pericarditis, suggesting that enhanced screening for ALT allows for early detection of acute pericarditis.