Genetic Approaches Highlight the Bi-directional Causal Association between Hypothyroidism and Primary Biliary Cirrhosis

Context: Hypothyroidism and Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) are often co-existed in observational epidemiological studies. However, the causal relationship between them remains unclear. Methods: Genetic correlation, Mendelian randomization (MR) and colocalization analysis were combined to assess the potential causal association between hypothyroidism and PBC by using summary statistics from large-scale genome-wide association studies. Various sensitivity analyses had been conducted to assess the robustness and the consistency of the findings.