Association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and osteoporosis: Mendelian randomization combined with bibliometric analysis

Abstract Background Previous observational studies have reported an association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and osteoporosis (OP). The aim of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between COPD and OP by two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. The current status of cross-sectional research between COPD and OP in the past decade was explored through bibliometrics. Methods Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that have been found to be strongly associated with COPD were used as instrumental variables (IVs) in MR Analysis. The primary outcome of the study was BMD measurement at five specific anatomical sites, namely the whole body, femoral neck, lumbar spine, forearm, and heel. These BMD measurements were derived primarily from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and summary statistics from the International Genetic Factors Consortium for Osteoporosis (GEFOS). The main analysis method was inverse variance weighting (IVW). Multiple sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the robustness and reliability of the current MR Results. Further confirmatory MR Analysis between COPD and OP was applied. In bibliometrics. Publications were extracted from the Web of Science core collection publications related to osteoporosis and sarcopenia published between January 2014 and October 2024; Bibliometrics and visualization were performed by Microsoft Office Excel, Citespace, and R (Bibliometrix). Results The MR Findings suggest that there is no causal relationship between COPD and BMD at five specific anatomical sites. The results of the primary IVW MR Analysis were generally supported by our sensitivity MR Analysis. We performed MR Analysis for the validation of COPD and OP (IVW OR: 1.019; 95%CI: 0.898–1.564; p = 0.768) also did not support a causal relationship between COPD and BMD. A total of 471 articles written by 1119 organizations from 42 countries/regions by 3331 authors and published in 238 journals were identified in the bibliometric analysis. China is the leading country in terms of the number of publications. China Medical University contributed the most publications. The International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease has the highest publication in this field. Conclusions In conclusion, This MR Study found no causal relationship between COPD and OP, suggesting that the observed associations may be due to common genetic effects or environmental confounders. The global research trends in this field in the past decade were summarized through bibliometric analysis, and care became the focus of future research on the relationship between copd and OP.