Exploring diseases/traits and blood proteins causally related to expression of ACE2, the putative receptor of 2019-nCov: A Mendelian Randomization analysis

Shitao Rao; Alexandria Lau; Hon-Cheong So

Another point we wish to emphasize is that we consider this work as largely an exploratory rather than confirmatory study. Our main purpose is to prioritize diseases, traits or proteins with potential causal links with ACE2 expression, and hence possibly increased susceptibility to 2019-nCov infection. Owing to relatively modest sample size of the outcome dataset of GTEx (N = 515), we expect the power to be modest. Also in view of the exploratory and hypothesis-generating nature of this study, we have not implemented stringent multiple testing procedures such as Bonferroni correction. On the other hand, we examined the consistency of the observed associations across different datasets, and considered those supported by more than one set of data as relatively more trustworthy or robust, similar to the approach adopted by Pendergrass et al. 40 . However, we emphasize that our findings will require further replications and support by further clinical and experimental studies.