Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Nov 6, 2022; 10(31): 11403-11410
Published online Nov 6, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i31.11403
Relationship between lipids and sleep apnea: Mendelian randomization analysis
Lian-Peng Zhang, Xiao-Xia Zhang
Lian-Peng Zhang, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Qingzhou Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Qingzhou People's Hospital, Qingzhou 262500, Shandong Province, China
Xiao-Xia Zhang, Department of AIDS Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Qingzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Qingzhou 262500, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: Zhang LP contributed to conceptualization, methodology, software, writing-review, and editing; Zhang XX contributed to formal analysis, writing-review, and editing.
Institutional review board statement: The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013). All data base were from public research. No patients were participated in the design or study. Thus, ethical approval was not needed for our study.
Informed consent statement: Since this study does not involve human participation, it is not necessary to sign an informed document.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: The data used in this study are all from published materials, dataset available from https://gwas.mrcieu.ac.uk/.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Lian-Peng Zhang, Doctor, MM, Doctor, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Qingzhou Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Qingzhou People's Hospital, No. 1726 Linglongshan Middle Road, Qingzhou 262500, Shandong Province, China. hxzlp2013@126.com
Received: May 8, 2022
Peer-review started: May 8, 2022
First decision: July 12, 2022
Revised: July 26, 2022
Accepted: September 20, 2022
Article in press: September 20, 2022
Published online: November 6, 2022
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has a negative effect on serum lipids, but the relationship between serum lipids and OSA is still uncertain.

Research motivation

We explored the direct effect of serum lipids on OSA.

Research objectives

We observed that lipids are not related to OSA, and we need to further look for other markers to predict OSA in the future.

Research methods

First, compared with other observational studies, the genetic variants can be obtained from different sample of individuals, and genetic associations can be obtained from large genome-wide association studies, which can greatly improve the statistical ability to detect small effects of complex phenotypes. Second, the study excluded more confounding factors, excluded heterogeneity and level pleiotropy, and conducted sensitivity tests to make our results more convincing.

Research results

In Mendelian randomization, the inverse variance weighted method manifested that the level of serum lipids including low-density lipoprotein (odds ratio [OR] = 0.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.99 to 1.00, P = 0.58), high-density lipoprotein (OR = 0.99, 95%CI = 0.99 to 1.00, P = 0.91), triglyceride (OR = 1.00, 95%CI = 0.99 to 1.00, P = 0.92), and total cholesterol (OR = 0.99, 95%CI = 0.99 to 1.00, P = 0.33) was not causally associated with sleep apnea (SA).

Research conclusions

Through MR analysis, this study concludes that serum lipids are not associated with SA.

Research perspectives

We need to find other markers to predict SA in the future.