Retinol and retinol binding protein 4 levels and COVID-19: a Mendelian randomization study

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has struck globally. Whether the related proteins of retinoic acid (RA) signaling pathway are causally associated with the risk of COVID-19 remains unestablished. We conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study to assess the associations of retinol, retinol binding protein 4 (RBP4), retinol dehydrogenase 16 (RDH16) and cellular retinoic acid binding protein 1 (CRABP1) with COVID-19 in European population. The outcome utilized the summary statistics of COVID-19 from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative. The exposure data were obtained from public genome wide association study (GWAS) database. We extracted SNPs from exposure data and outcome data. The inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR-Egger and Wald ratio methods were employed to assess the causal relationship between exposure and outcome. Sensitivity analyses were performed to ensure the validity of the results. The MR estimates showed that retinol was associated with lower COVID-19 susceptibility using IVW (OR: 0.69, 95