The causal relationship between thyroid function, autoimune thyroid dysfunction and lung cancer: a mendelian randomization study

Background The role of thyroid hormones in cancers has been discussed in observational studies; however, the causal relationship between them remains controversial.

Methods The SNPs associated with hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism were selected from a FinnGen biobank of 342,499 (190,879 females and 151,620 males) Finnish adult subjects.

Data from the Thyroidomics Consortium on 72,167 individuals were used to assess genetically determined thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and free thyroxine (FT4).

Lung cancer, lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell lung cancer GWAS data from the International Lung Cancer Consortium(ILCCO).

Six different Mendelian randomization (MR) Methods, including Inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR-Egger, Simple mode, MR-Pleiotropy Residual Sum and Outlier methods (MR-PRESSO), Weighted mode and Weighted median were used to Two-Sample MR analysis.

IVW was used as the primary estimate.

Sensitivity analyses were examined via four aspects (Cochran’s Q-test, MR Egger intercept analysis, Funnel plot and Leave-one-out sensitivity test).

Results The OR of hypothyroidism on lung cancer was 0.918 (95% CI, 0.859–0.982; p  = 0.013) in MR analysis with IVW method.

No evidence for effects of hyperthyroidism, TSH and FT4 on lung cancer risk was found via six MR methods.

Meanwhile, there was no evidence for effects of lung cancer on hypothyroidism through six MR methods.

Lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell lung carcinoma were further analyzed on the basis of lung cancer.

The OR of hypothyroidism on lung adenocarcinoma was 0.893(95% CI, 0.813–0.981; p  = 0.019), the OR of hypothyroidism on squamous cell lung cancer was 0.888(95%CI,0.797–0.990, p  = 0.032) in MR analysis with IVW method.

Conclusion In summary, hypothyroidism genetically had a protective causal association with lung cancer.

Furthermore, hypothyroidism had protective effects both on lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell lung cancer.

Further work is needed to elucidate the potential mechanisms.