ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The long-term health consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remain largely unclear. This study aimed to apply the Mendelian randomization (MR) design to estimate the causal associations between COVID-19 and ten cardiovascular conditions. METHODS: Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with COVID-19 were used as instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of COVID-19 on ten cardiovascular conditions. The random-effects inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method was conducted for the main analyses with a complementary analysis of the weighted median and MR-Egger approaches. RESULTS: In the IVW analysis, genetically predicted COVID-19 was suggestively associated with major coronary heart disease events (OR 1.081; 95% CI 1.007-1.16; P = 0.045) and heart failure (OR 1.049; 95% CI 1.001-1.1; P = 0.045) with similar estimates in weighted median regressions. No directional pleiotropic effects were observed in both funnel plots and MR-Egger intercepts. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide direct evidence that patients infected with COVID-19 are causally associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, especially for major coronary heart disease events and heart failure.