Association between venous leg ulcers and knee osteoarthritis: A Mendelian randomization study

To gain a clearer understanding of the relationship between venous leg ulcers (VLUs) and knee osteoarthritis (KOA), we performed a two-sample, bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis in this study. The present MR was carried out using summary data from publicly available genome-wide association studies. After filtering single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), we applied a variety of MR methods including inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR egger, weighted mode, and weighted median. IVW analysis revealed that the genetic association between VLUs and KOA was not significant (β = -0.017; SE 0.039; p = 0.658). In agreement with the IVW analysis, the findings of the weighted median estimator (β = -0.017; SE 0.052, p = 0.751), MR egger (β = 0.057; SE 0.084; p = 0.513), and weighted mode (β = 0.060; SE 0.078; p = 0.456) indicated the absence of a significant genetic association between VLUs and KOA. Furthermore, reverse causality analysis suggested a lack of genetic relationship between KOA and VLUs. In conclusion, the present MR study does not suggest a causal relationship or reverse causal relationship between VLUs and KOA.