Genetic association between human skin microbiota with vaginitis: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

The human skin microbiome is closely associated with various diseases. We aimed to find the causal association of the human skin microbiome with vaginitis. A two-way two-sample Mendelian randomization study used summary statistics of the human skin microbiota from the largest genome-wide association study meta-analysis. Pooled statistics for vaginitis disease were obtained from the FinnGen consortium R10 release. Inverse variance weighted, MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted model, MR-PRESSO, and STEIGER methods were used to test for causal associations between different parts of the human skin microbiota and vaginitis disease in either dry or moist environments. IVW estimates suggest that phylococcus hominischaracterizes a protective effect against vaginitis lesions at the Antecubitalfossa wet site. Staphylococcus in the dry state at the Dorsalforearm site also demonstrated a protective effect against vaginitis lesions. Micrococcus showed a trend of up-regulation of vaginitis risk under IVW method estimation. In contrast, Anaerococcus and Veillonella were associated with a low risk of vaginitis as estimated by the IVW method: ASV061 and ASV065. In the Class, IVW estimation showed that Bacilli at Antecubitalfossa site had an increased risk effect on vaginitis in the moist skin condition. Similarly in Genus, Staphylococcus at Antecubitalfossa sites had an increased risk effect against vaginitis in the moist skin condition. Based on the results of the inverse MR analysis, no significant causal effect of vaginitis on the human skin microbiota was found. This two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization study found a causal relationship between seven human skin microbiota and vaginitis, further enriching our understanding of the value of skin flora in reproductive diseases such as vaginitis.

Keywords: Amplicon sequence variation (ASV); Human skin microbiota; Mendelian randomization (MR); Meta-analysis; Vaginitis.