Emergency Medicine: Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

A Mendelian Randomization Study Investigated the Association between Socioeconomic Status and the Risk of Myocardial Infarction.

Qiang Luo, Meijia Liu, Xueqing Sun, Longbo Li, Guan Wang, Yongfeng Shi*, Bin Liu

Background: The causal relationship between socioeconomic factors and the risk of cardiovascular disease is not well understood. We applied a two sample Mendelian Randomization (MR) to find the causal link between Socioeconomic Status (SES) and the risk of Myocardial Infarction (MI) using data from large scale Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) of socioeconomic status and myocardial infarction.

Method: Using a two sample MR design, the genetic tools for the exposure SES and the outcome MI were gathered from different GWAS data sources. We first identified the causal effect of the socioeconomic determinants on SES and then investigated the causal relationship between SES and MI. Inverse variance weighted method, weighted median method, MR-Egger regression, MR Pleiotropy RESidual Sum and Outlier test were used for MR analyses.

Results: Age of full time education has a reverse causal relationship with MI (OR=0.57, 95% CI=0.38-0.87, p=0.0096). There is a potential causal association between self-reported household income and the risk of MI (OR=0.41, 95% CI=0.32-0.52, p=8.82 × 10^-14). Furthermore, heavy physical work is significantly associated with an increased risk of MI (OR=1.79, 95 percent CI=1.02-3.13, p=0.042).

Conclusion: Our MR analysis supports the hypothesis that low SES levels could increase MI incidence.

Published Date: 2025-02-11; Received Date: 2023-11-08