TY - JOUR PY - 2023// TI - Identifying causal associations between early sexual intercourse or number of sexual partners and major depressive disorders: a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis JO - Journal of affective disorders A1 - Lu, Zhe A1 - Sun, Yaoyao A1 - Liao, Yundan A1 - Kang, Zhewei A1 - Feng, Xiaoyang A1 - Zhao, Guorui A1 - Sun, Junyuan A1 - Zhang, Yuyanan A1 - Yue, Weihua SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - BACKGROUND: Early sexual intercourse and a greater number of sexual partners have been proved associated with depression. However, the causality of these associations is not clear.

METHODS: To unveil the causal associations between sexual factors and major depression disorder (MDD). The bidirectional, two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study was conducted, which used genetic variants associated with two sexual factors (age first had sexual intercourse, n = 406,457; lifetime number of sexual partners, n = 378,882) and MDD (n = 500,199) from the largest genome-wide association studies (GWASs) conducted by the UK biobank and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. The two-step MR analysis was applied to assess mediation. The Genetic predictors for five risky behaviors were also obtained from the most up-to-date GWAS conducted by the UK Biobank (ever self-harmed: 117,733; ever attempted suicide: 4933; psychoactive substance abuse, alcohol use, and tobacco use: 463,010).

RESULTS: MR analysis indicated a risky causal effect of age first had sexual intercourse (OR = 0.720, 95 % CI: 0.661-0.784, P = 2.45 × 10(-14)) and lifetime number of sexual partners (OR = 1.656, 95 % CI: 1.356-2.022, P = 7.46 × 10(-7)) on MDD. Mediation analysis showed the effects were mediated by tobacco use, with a proportion of 34.20 % on age first had sexual intercourse and 22.94 % on lifetime number of sexual partners separately. LIMITATIONS: The overlap of participants in different traits and unclear gender.

CONCLUSIONS: Robust genetic evidence indicated that premature sexual intercourse and more sexual partners were risks for MDD. Risky behaviors, especially the tobacco use, mediated this effect.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0165-0327 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.04.079 ID - ref1 ER -