Causality between Helicobacter pylori infection and periodontitis:a Mendelian randomization study

GUO Jingfang; LI Changxu

doi:10.3969/j.issn.2097-1753.2025.06.010

Abstract：Objective To investigate the causal relationships between Helicobacter pylori infection and periodontitis via Mendelian randomization analysis.Methods Data on Helicobacter pylori infection was obtained from the European genome-wide association study database,involving 4 683 patient samples,while data on periodontitis single nucleotide polymorphism(SNP)was retrieved from the Finnish database,involving 367 samples.Two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization(MR)was used for analysis.The inverse variance weighting(IVW)method,MR-Egger regression method,weighted median method and weighted model method were used for two-sample Mendelian randomized analysis to determine the causal association between Helicobacter pylori infection and periodontitis.Cochran's Q-test method,horizontal pleiotropy and residual one method were adopted to evaluate the robustness of the results.Results By taking Helicobacter pylori infection and periodontitis as exposures,twelve SNPs and nine SNPs were extracted as instrumental variables,and the results of MR analysis and reverse MR analysis showed that there was no causal relationship between periodontitis and Helicobacter pylori infection(IVW OR=1.052,1.020,P=0.807,0.170).Heterogeneity analysis(P=0.247,0.753)and horizontal pleiotropy analysis(P=0.761,0.093)confirmed that the results were reliable,and there was no horizontal pleiotropy.The leave-one-out method suggested that the research results were robust.Conclusion MR studies in European populations do not support a causal relationship between periodontitis and Helicobacter pylori infection.