Abstract
Our previous published research proved that patients with a higher level of peripheral blood eosinophils would suffer a higher risk of nasal polyps. Nevertheless, previous studies did not determine the causality between peripheral blood eosinophils and the risk of acute/chronic rhinosinusitis. This study aims to investigate the causal effect of peripheral blood eosinophils on acute/chronic rhinosinusitis using the Mendelian randomization (MR) method. The genome-wide association studies (GWAS) catalog was extracted from the integrative epidemiology unit open GWAS project. Based on the same alleles, the GWAS data of peripheral blood eosinophil counts and acute/chronic rhinosinusitis were harmonized. As the main method, the method of inverse variance weighted was applied to analyze the causality. With the inverse variance weighted method, the MR analysis indicated that peripheral blood eosinophils have a significant causal effect on the risk of acute rhinosinusitis (finn-b-J10_RHINOSINUSITIS, odds ratio [OR] = 1.217, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.139-1.299, P < .001) and chronic rhinosinusitis (finn-b-J10_CHRONRHINOSINUSITIS, OR = 1.571, 95% CI = 1.434-1.720, P < .001; ukb-b-69, OR = 1.002, 95% CI = 1.001-1.003, P < .001; ukb-d-J32, OR = 1.001, 95% CI = 1.000-1.002, P < .001). The MR Egger and the weighted median methods supported the results. Sensitivity analyses proved that the results were robust. Our findings proved that the high level of peripheral blood eosinophils increases the occurrence of acute rhinosinusitis and transition to chronic rhinosinusitis on genetic causality.