Genetic support of the causal relationship between COVID-19 and aspergillosis: A two-sample mendelian randomization study

<bold>Background:</bold> Although the concept of COVID-19 associated pulmonary aspergillosis has been introduced to raise concerns for a high incidence and high rate of associated mortality, diverse results were obtained in some studies with a low incidence. The direct casual association between COVID-19 and aspergillosis remains an important question to elucidate. <bold>Methods:</bold> A two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis was conducted based on the summary statistics data of genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The inverse-variance weighted (IVW) analysis was chosen as main method. MR-Egger and weighted median methods were supplemented to confirm the results. The COVID-19 GWAS data were derived from COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative. The aspergillosis GWAS data were obtained from cohort UK Biobank (UKBB) and FinnGen cohort. The data from UKBB were analyzed as the discovery group, and FinnGen cohort were used to validate the findings. <bold>Results and conclusion:</bold> IVW method in UKBB indicated a lack of causality of COVID-19 to aspergillosis in the disease susceptibility, severity and hospitalization. Meanwhile, aspergillosis didn’t exhibit causality with COVID-19 susceptibility, severity and hospitalization (Fig 1). The FinnGen duplicated this result (Fig 2). Non-causal relationship was observed between COVID-19 and aspergillosis from a genetic perspective. Further in-depth research is imperative to explore the potential links other than genetics.