Associations between high-altitude adaptation and risk of cardiovascular diseases: a bidirectional Mendelian randomization study

High-altitude adaptation (HAA) was reported to be significantly associated with reduced risks for multiple cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, the causality and direction of the associations are largely uncharacterized. We aimed to examine the potential causal relationships between HAA and six types of CVD, including coronary artery disease (CAD), cerebral aneurysm, ischemic stroke, peripheral artery disease, arrhythmia and atrial fibrillation. We obtained the summary data from largest available genome-wide association study of HAA and six types of CVD. Two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses were performed to infer the causality between them. In the sensitivity analyses, MR-Egger regression analyses and MR-Pleiotropy RESidual Sum and Outlier (MR-PRESSO) global analyses were used to assess the pleiotropic effects; Cochran's Q tests were used to test the heterogeneity by inverse variance-weighted (IVW) and MR-Egger methods; and the leave-one-out analyses were used to examine whether some single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) could influence the results independently. The MR main analyses showed that the genetically instrumented HAA was significantly causally associated with the reduced risks of CAD (odds ratio [OR] = 0.029; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.004–0.234; P = 8.64 × 10−4). In contrast, there was no statistically significant relationship between CVDs and HAA. Our findings provide evidence for the causal effects of HAA on the reduced risks of CAD. However, there is no causality of CVDs on HAA. These findings might be helpful in developing the prevention and intervention strategies for CAD.