Exploring genetic associations between leukocyte telomere length and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy using mendelian randomization

Abstract In this study, we conducted a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to explore potential associations between leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) using the summary data from a genome-wide association study (GWAS). LTL (n = 472,174), HCM (n = 218792), heart failure (HF) (n = 218792), and HCM with HF (HCM-HF) (n = 218540) were sampled from the GWAS database. Various methods such as MR-Egger, inverse variance weighting (IVW), and weighted median were employed to estimate causal effects. In the forward MR analysis, MR results indicated that shorter LTL might be associated with an increased risk of HCM (IVW: OR = 1.94, 95% CI: 1.19–3.16, p = 0.008), HF (IVW: OR = 1.14, 95% CI: 1.01–1.29, p = 0.035) and HCM-HF (IVW: OR = 2.03, 95% CI: 1.05–3.93, p = 0.036). Additionally, the reverse MR analysis did not reveal any significant causal effects. A shorter LTL might be associated with a higher risk of developing HCM, thus offering a basis for subsequent clinical investigations into the causal relationship between LTL and HCM.