Causal Effects of Lipids-Related Metabolites on Androgenic Alopecia: A Mendelian Randomization Study

To investigate whether increased levels of lipids-related metabolites (LRMs) result in androgenic alopecia (AGA). A two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study was designed, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) respectively related to nine LRMs were selected from the genome-wide association study (GWAS) dataset. An MR analysis was performed to assess the causal association between LRMs and AGA. Through the fixed-effect inverse variance weighting (IVW) method, MR analysis indicated that Apolipoprotein B (ApoB), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) had a causal relationship with AGA. No obvious heterogeneity or pleiotropy was observed. The risk of AGA increases significantly when the serum levels of ApoB, LDL, and VLDL increase. This causal relationship is solid and free of interference from confounding factors.