Study On Association Of Helicobacter Pylori And Periodontitis

The incidences of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) and periodontitis are rising worldwide. This study aimed to investigate the potential causal association between H. pylori and periodontitis through Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. A two-sample MR study was conducted using publicly available Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) data of European ancestry. The relationships between H. pylori and periodontitis and number of teeth were assessed using summary-level data. Moreover, inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, simple mode and weighted mode were used to examine causal effects. The results were further validated using sensitivity analyses. The IVW method identified that CagA, an important pathogenic factor in H. pylori, had a causal relationship with periodontitis (odds ratio [OR], 1.091, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.009−1.179, P=0.027). It has shown that horizontal pleiotropy is unlikely to change causal estimates. Meanwhile, there was no heterogeneity in the MR-Egger and IVW analyses (P=0.221 and P=0.297, respectively). Whereas H. pylori did not show any significant genetic causal effect on number of teeth. Similarly, no significant causal effect of periodontitis and number of teeth on H. pylori was found in the reverse-MR analysis. The results of our MR analysis support a causal relationship between H. pylori and periodontitis.