Associations between cutaneous melanoma and prostate cancer: A bidirectional 2-sample Mendelian randomization study

Cutaneous melanoma (CM) and prostate cancer (PC) are both more prevalent in males. With the advancements in genetics and molecular biology, there has been a growing focus on exploring the potential genetic linkage between these 2 malignancies. Observational studies have indicated that the occurrence of CM is associated with the incidence of PC. However, the specific factors contributing to the heightened risk of CM remain unknown. The primary objective of this study was to investigate whether there exists a common (shared) genetic basis for both cancers using Mendelian randomization (MR). MR was employed to extract genetic data for CM and PC from genome-wide association studies. And applied inverse variance weighted (IVW), weighted median, simple median, MR-PRESSO and MR-RAPS to evaluate the association between CM and PC at genetic level. Sensitivity was assessed using Leave-one-out, MR-Egger, and MR-PRESSO, while heterogeneity was tested with the Cochran Q-test. IVW and other MR methods found no evidence for the effect of CM on the risk of PC, IVW analysis (OR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.84-1.09, P = .521) and MR-Egger regression (OR = 1.35, 95% CI: 0.14-13.50, P = .810), and no evidence of the effect of PC on the risk of CM, IVW analysis (OR = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.90-1.12, P = .957) and MR-Egger regression (OR = 1.17, 95% CI: 0.66-2.06, P = .604). The results of the secondary analysis using GRS were in line with those obtained from the primary analysis, thus confirming the robustness and reliability of this study. Our findings do not provide any evidence supporting that genetic association between CM and PC.