Association between venous leg ulcers and knee osteoarthritis: A Mendelian randomization study

Abstract To gain a clearer understanding of the relationship between venous leg ulcers (VLUs) and knee osteoarthritis (KOA), we performed a two‐sample, bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis in this study. The present MR was carried out using summary data from publicly available genome‐wide association studies. After filtering single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), we applied a variety of MR methods including inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR egger, weighted mode, and weighted median. IVW analysis revealed that the genetic association between VLUs and KOA was not significant ( β = −0.017; SE 0.039; p = 0.658). In agreement with the IVW analysis, the findings of the weighted median estimator ( β = −0.017; SE 0.052, p = 0.751), MR egger ( β = 0.057; SE 0.084; p = 0.513), and weighted mode ( β = 0.060; SE 0.078; p = 0.456) indicated the absence of a significant genetic association between VLUs and KOA. Furthermore, reverse causality analysis suggested a lack of genetic relationship between KOA and VLUs. In conclusion, the present MR study does not suggest a causal relationship or reverse causal relationship between VLUs and KOA.