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.