Depression and the risk of fibromyalgia syndrome: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Xiaoshan Ma; Jing Sun; Ren Geng; Yao Zhao; Wanzhen Xu; Yining Jiang; Liyan Zhao; Yunqian Li

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1282172

Depression and the risk of fibromyalgia syndrome: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Front Psychiatry. 2024 Nov 12:15:1282172. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1282172. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Xiaoshan Ma¹, Jing Sun², Ren Geng¹, Yao Zhao¹, Wanzhen Xu³, Yining Jiang¹, Liyan Zhao⁴, Yunqian Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurosurgery, First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China.
² Department of Anesthesiology, First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China.
³ Department of Neurosurgery, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University Dezhou Hospital, Dezhou, China.
⁴ Department of Blood Transfusion, Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China.

Abstract

Background: Fibromyalgia (FM) is a common illness with a wide range of symptoms, mainly manifested by unexplained chronic systemic musculoskeletal pain, sleep disorders and fatigue, sometimes accompanied by cognitive impairment, psychiatric symptoms and autonomic dysfunction. Previous studies have indicated a correlation between depression and the risk of FM; however, it remains uncertain whether this association reflects a causal relationship.

Methods: We evaluated the etiological association between the genetically predicted depression and the risk of developing FM by conducting a two-sample Mendelian Randomization (MR) study. The data on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) related to depression were obtained from the UK Biobank (UKB) and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) of White British European ancestry, and the data for FM were from the 5th release of the FinnGen study. We adopted the Inverse Variance Weighted (IVW) approach as the principal standard. In order to detect the existence of horizontal pleiotropy and heterogeneity, we adopted the MR-Egger approach as the sensitivity analysis.

Results: In our MR analysis, 42 depression-related variants were identified as valid instrumental variables (IVs). The IVW approach's results manifest that there is no etiologic causality between genetically predicted depression and the risk of FM (odds ratio [OR]: 1.673, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.852-3.287, P = 0.135). The study did not find any significant heterogeneities or horizontal pleiotropies (P > 0.05).

Conclusions: Our results suggest that there is no significant genetic evidence linking depression to an increased risk of FM. However, further research is necessary to investigate the potential relationship and underlying mechanisms between depression and the risk of FM.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization analysis; depression; fibromyalgia; risk; single nucleotide polymorphism.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81672505) and the Jilin Province Science and Technology Development Planning Project (20200404101YY and 20200801023GH).