Mendelian Randomization Study: Investigating the Causal Impact of Covid-19 on Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes

Abstract

Background Due to limitations in observational studies, the link between COVID-19 and adverse pregnancy outcomes (APOs) remains inconclusive. This study uses two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to assess COVID-19's causal effects on APO traits. Methods We applied inverse variance weighting (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted mode, and simple mode to thoroughly evaluate the effects of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and severity on eight APO traits. Results Our findings indicate that COVID-19 infection is associated with an increased risk of spontaneous miscarriages (OR: 0.95, 95%CI (0.99, 0.91); p = 0.014) and preterm labor and delivery (OR: 1.30, 95%CI (1.63, 1.04); p = 0.019), and a decreased risk of eclampsia (OR: 0.35, 95%CI (0.94, 0.12); p = 0.033).