Causal relationship between sleep apnea and prostatitis: A 2-sample Mendelian randomization study

Observational studies indicate that the risk of prostatitis in sleep apnea patients is higher than those without sleep apnea. However, the causal relationships remain to be determined. This study aims to investigate the causal relationships of sleep apnea on prostatitis using Mendelian randomization (MR). Summary-level data for sleep apnea (16,761 cases and 201,194 controls) and prostatitis (1859 cases and 72,799 controls) were available from the GWAS summary data. Two-sample MR analyses were performed to investigate the causal relationship between sleep apnea and prostatitis. The inverse variance weighted (IVW) analysis was employed as the primary statistical method. In 2-sample MR analyses, we found that IVW estimates revealed that sleep apnea inferred an effect on risk of prostatitis at statistical significance (odds ratio [OR] = 1.370, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.094-0.535, P = .005). This MR study strengthens the evidence of a causal relationship between sleep apnea and prostatitis in Europeans.