Tianjin Medical Journal ›› 2025, Vol. 53 ›› Issue (9): 946-951.doi: 10.11958/20250987

• Clinical Research • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Multi-omics analysis of the causal relationship and mediation mechanisms between obstructive sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation

CHEN Miaomiao(), ZHANG Yazheng, ZHAO Fang, YANG Liheng, JIAO Lina, ZHAO Xiaoyun()   

  1. Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Tianjin Chest Hospital, Tianjin 300041, China
  • Received:2025-03-11 Revised:2025-07-02 Published:2025-09-15 Online:2025-09-16
  • Contact: E-mail: zxydoctor@163.com

Abstract:

Objective To analyse the causal relationship between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and atrial fibrillation (AF) by Mendelian randomization (MR) method, and to explore the role of inflammatory factors, immune cells, blood metabolites and circulating proteins in it. Methods In this study, MR analysis was used to investigate the causal link between OSA and AF. Inverse variance weighting (IVW), MR-Egger and other methods were used for sensitivity analysis. Additionally, the study also explored the effects of 91 inflammatory factors, 731 immune cells, 1 400 blood metabolites and 4 907 circulating proteins on AF. Results MR analysis revealed a significant causal relationship between OSA and AF (OR = 1.078, P<0.05). Conversely, reverse MR analysis did not find causal relationship between AF and OSA (P>0.05). Further analysis revealed that 5 inflammatory factors, 19 immune cells, 15 blood metabolites and 67 circulating proteins were risk factors for AF. Among them, OSA was the risk factor for one inflammatory factor, one blood metabolite and 12 circulating proteins. There was no significant causal association between OSA and 19 immune cells. Conclusion This study demonstrates that OSA increases the risk of AF. Meanwhile, it is found that inflammatory factors, immune cells, blood metabolites and circulating proteins have potential impacts on the pathogenesis of AF.

Key words: sleep apnea, obstructive, atrial fibrillation, Mendelian randomization analysis, inflammatory factors, immune cells, metabolites, plasma proteins

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