Association between periodontitis and COVID-19 infection: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Background and Objective Epidemiological studies report associations between coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and periodontitis; however, causality has not been proven. The aim of this study is to assess the associations between COVID-19 susceptibility and periodontitis with two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses. Methods A two-sample summary MR analysis was performed using data for outcome and exposure from the OpenGWAS database on people of European descent. Periodontal complex traits (PCTs) were chosen as a proxy for the periodontitis phenotype. The causal association between PCT3 (Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans), PCT5 (Porphyromonas gingivalis), and gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and COVID-19 were considered. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) data with the two largest sample sizes were selected as COVID-19 outcomes (datasets ebi-a-GCST010776 and ebi-a-GCST010777). Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with PCT3, PCT5, and GCF IL-1β at statistical significance at genome-wide level (P < 5 × 10−8) were identified as genetic instruments. We used two-sample summary MR methods and tested the existence of a pleiotropic effect with MR-Egger. Results Inverse-variance weighted (IVW) estimates showed that there was a positive association between COVID-19 risk and periodontitis (ebi-a-GCST010776: odds ratio [OR] = 1.02 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.00–1.05), P = 0.0171; ebi-a-GCST010777: OR = 1.03 (95% CI, 1.00–1.05), P = 0.0397). The weighted median also showed directionally similar estimates. Exploration of the causal associations between other PCTs and COVID-19 identified a slight effect of local inflammatory response (GCF IL-1β) on COVID-19 risk across the two datasets (ebi-a-GCST010776: IVW OR = 1.02 (95% CI, [1.01–1.03]), P < 0.001; ebi-a-GCST010777: IVW OR = 1.03 (95% CI, [1.02–1.04]), P < 0.001). The intercepts of MR-Egger yielded no proof for significant directional pleiotropy for either dataset (ebi-a-GCST010776: P = 0.7660; ebi-a-GCST010777: P = 0.6017). Conclusions The findings suggests that periodontitis and the higher GCF IL-1β levels is causally related to increase susceptibility of COVID-19. However, given the limitations of our study, the well-designed randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm its findings, which may represent a new non-pharmaceutical intervention for preventing COVID-19.