Associations of cholecystectomy with the risk of gastroesophageal reflux disease: a Mendelian randomization study

Abstract Background: Cholecystectomy is the standard surgery for patients with gallbladder disease, but the impact of cholecystectomy on gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) is not clear. Methods: We obtained genetic variants associated with cholecystectomy at a genome-wide significant level (P value < 5 [mult] 10-8) as instrumental variables (IVs) and performed Mendelian randomization (MR) to explore the relationship with GERD. Results: The Inverse Variance Weighted analysis (IVW) showed that the risk of GERD in patients after cholecystectomy increased (OR = 2.19; 95% CI: 1.18 [ndash] 4.09). At the same time, the analysis results of weighted median (OR = 2.30; 95% CI: 1.51 [ndash] 3.48) and weighted mode (OR = 2.21; 95% CI: 1.42 [ndash] 3.45) were also consistent with the direction of the IVW analysis and were statistically significant (P [lt] 0.05). Conclusions: This study shows that patients who have undergone cholecystectomy are a susceptible population of GERD. Keywords: Cholecystectomy; Gastroesophageal; Mendelian randomization.