scholarly journals Obesity and atypical depression symptoms: findings from Mendelian randomization in two European cohorts

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Pistis ◽  
Yuri Milaneschi ◽  
Caroline L. Vandeleur ◽  
Aurélie M. Lasserre ◽  
Brenda W.J.H. Penninx ◽  
...  

AbstractStudies considering the causal role of body mass index (BMI) for the predisposition of major depressive disorder (MDD) based on a Mendelian Randomization (MR) approach have shown contradictory results. These inconsistent findings may be attributable to the heterogeneity of MDD; in fact, several studies have documented associations between BMI and mainly the atypical subtype of MDD. Using a MR approach, we investigated the potential causal role of obesity in both the atypical subtype and its five specific symptoms assessed according to the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in two large European cohorts, CoLaus|PsyCoLaus (n = 3350, 1461 cases and 1889 controls) and NESDA|NTR (n = 4139, 1182 cases and 2957 controls). We first tested general obesity measured by BMI and then the body fat distribution measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Results suggested that BMI is potentially causally related to the symptom increase in appetite, for which inverse variance weighted, simple median and weighted median MR regression estimated slopes were 0.68 (SE = 0.23, p = 0.004), 0.77 (SE = 0.37, p = 0.036), and 1.11 (SE = 0.39, p = 0.004). No causal effect of BMI or WHR was found on the risk of the atypical subtype or for any of the other atypical symptoms. Our findings show that higher obesity is likely causal for the specific symptom of increase in appetite in depressed participants and reiterate the need to study depression at the granular level of its symptoms to further elucidate potential causal relationships and gain additional insight into its biological underpinnings.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlin H Wade ◽  
David Carslake ◽  
Naveed Sattar ◽  
George Davey Smith ◽  
Nicholas J Timpson

AbstractObjectiveObtain estimates of the causal relationship between different levels of body mass index (BMI) and mortality.MethodsMendelian randomization (MR) was conducted using genotypic variation reliably associated with BMI to test the causal effect of increasing BMI on all-cause and cause-specific mortality in participants of White British ancestry in UK Biobank.ResultsMR analyses supported existing evidence for a causal association between higher levels of BMI and greater risk of all-cause mortality (hazard ratio (HR) per 1kg/m2: 1.02; 95% CI: 0.97,1.06) and mortality from cardiovascular diseases (HR: 1.12; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.23), specifically coronary heart disease (HR: 1.19; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.35) and those other than stroke/aortic aneurysm (HR: 1.13; 95% CI: 0.93, 1.38), stomach cancer (HR: 1.30; 95% CI: 0.91, 1.86) and oesophageal cancer (HR: 1.08; 95% CI: 0.84, 1.38), and with decreased risk of lung cancer mortality (HR: 0.97; 95% CI: 0.84, 1.11). Sex-stratified analyses supported a causal role of higher BMI in increasing the risk of mortality from bladder cancer in males and other causes in females, but in decreasing the risk of respiratory disease mortality in males. The characteristic J-shaped observational association between BMI and mortality was visible with MR analyses but with a smaller value of BMI at which mortality risk was lowest and apparently flatter over a larger range of BMI.ConclusionResults support a causal role of higher BMI in increasing the risk of all-cause mortality and mortality from other causes. However, studies with greater numbers of deaths are needed to confirm the current findings.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlin H. Wade ◽  
Scott T. Chiesa ◽  
Alun D. Hughes ◽  
Nish Chaturvedi ◽  
Marietta Charakida ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTBackgroundMendelian randomization (MR) studies of body mass index (BMI) and cardiovascular health in mid-to-late life suggest causal relationships, but the nature of these has not been explored systematically at younger ages. Using complementary MR and recall-by-genotype (RbG) methodologies, our objective was to estimate the causal effect of BMI on detailed measures of cardiovascular health in a population of young healthy adults.Methods and FindingsData from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children were used. For MR analyses, a genetic risk score (GRS) comprising 97 independent single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and constructed using external weighting was used as an instrument to test the causal effect of each unit increase in BMI (kg/m2) on selected cardiovascular phenotypes measured at age 17 (N=7909). An independent enriched sample from the same cohort participated in a RbG study at age 21, which enabled more detailed cardiovascular phenotyping (N=418; 191/227 from the lower/upper ∼30% of a genome-wide GRS distribution predicting variation in BMI). The causal effect of BMI on the additional cardiovascular phenotypes was assessed by comparing the two recalled groups. Difference in mean BMI between RbG groups was 3.85kg/m2 (95% CI: 2.53, 4.63; P=6.09×1011). In both MR and RbG analyses, results indicated that higher BMI causes higher blood pressure (BP) and left ventricular mass (indexed to height2.7, LVMI) in young adults (e.g. difference in LVMI per kg/m2 using MR: 1.07g/m2.7; 95% CI: 0.62, 1.52; P=3.87×10−06 and per 3.58kg/m2 using RbG: 1.65g/m2.7 95% CI: 0.83, 2.47; P=0.0001). Additionally, RbG results indicated a causal role of higher BMI on higher stroke volume (SV; difference per 3.58kg/m2: 1.49ml/m2.04; 95% CI: 0.62, 2.35; P=0.001) and cardiac output (CO; difference per 3.58kg/m2: 0.11l /min/m1.83; 95% CI: 0.03, 0.19; P=0.01). Neither analysis supported a causal role of higher BMI on heart rate.ConclusionsComplementary MR and RbG causal methodologies, together with a range of appropriate sensitivity analyses, showed that higher BMI is likely to cause worse cardiovascular health, specifically higher BP and LVMI, even in youth. These consistent results support efforts to prevent or reverse obesity in the young.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiyong Cui ◽  
Yun Tian

Abstract Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has struck globally and is exerting a devastating toll on humans. The pandemic has led to calls for widespread vitamin D supplementation in public. However, evidence supporting the role of vitamin D in the COVID-19 pandemic remains controversial. Methods We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to analyze the causal effect of the 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentration on COVID-19 susceptibility, severity and hospitalization traits by using summary-level GWAS data. The causal associations were estimated with inverse variance weighted (IVW) with fixed effects (IVW-fixed) and random effects (IVW-random), MR-Egger, weighted edian and MR Robust Adjusted Profile Score (MR.RAPS) methods. We further applied the MR Steiger filtering method, MR Pleiotropy RESidual Sum and Outlier (MR-PRESSO) global test and PhenoScanner tool to check and remove single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were horizontally pleiotropic. Results We found no evidence to support the causal associations between the serum 25(OH)D concentration and the risk of COVID-19 susceptibility [IVW-fixed: odds ratio (OR) = 0.9049, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.8197–0.9988, p = 0.0473], severity (IVW-fixed: OR = 1.0298, 95% CI 0.7699–1.3775, p = 0.8432) and hospitalized traits (IVW-fixed: OR = 1.0713, 95% CI 0.8819–1.3013, p = 0.4878) using outlier removed sets at a Bonferroni-corrected p threshold of 0.0167. Sensitivity analyses did not reveal any sign of horizontal pleiotropy. Conclusions Our MR analysis provided precise evidence that genetically lowered serum 25(OH)D concentrations were not causally associated with COVID-19 susceptibility, severity or hospitalized traits. Our study did not provide evidence assessing the role of vitamin D supplementation during the COVID-19 pandemic. High-quality randomized controlled trials are necessary to explore and define the role of vitamin D supplementation in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Yangyang Li ◽  
Li Jin ◽  
Jing Yan ◽  
Hong Zhang ◽  
Rong Zhang ◽  
...  

Few studies have illuminated the genetic role of T cell costimulatory molecule CD28/CD80/CTLA4 variants in diabetic kidney disease (DKD) susceptibility. We aimed to investigate the causal role of genetic polymorphisms in CD28/CD80/CTLA4 with DKD susceptibility in patients with T2DM. A total of 3253 patients with T2DM were recruited for genotyping: including 204 DKD patients and 371 controls in stage 1 and 819 DKD patients and 563 controls in stage 2; besides, 1296 T2DM patients were selected for the analysis of association between loci and DKD-related traits. A subset of 227 T2DM patients (118 patients with DKD and 109 patients without DKD) from the total population above were selected to assess serum soluble CD28 (sCD28) levels. Then, we performed a candidate gene association study to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with DKD susceptibility and further used those SNPs to perform Mendelian randomization analyses of serum sCD28 level and DKD susceptibility. Under additive genetic models, CD28-rs3116494 ( OR = 1.29 [95% CI 1.11, 1.51], P = 0.0011 ) and CD80-rs3850890 ( OR = 1.16 [95% CI 1.02, 1.31], P = 0.0283 ) were associated with DKD susceptibility adjusted for age, gender, body mass index (BMI), duration of diabetes, and HbA1c. CD28-rs3116494 was associated with serum sCD28 level ( β = 0.26 [95% CI 0.08, 0.44], P = 0.0043 ). The Mendelian randomization analysis showed that CD28-rs3116494 played a causal role in DKD by influencing serum sCD28 levels ( β = 1.15 [95% CI 0.46, 1.83], P = 0.0010 ). In conclusion, we identified that two novel SNPs, CD28-rs3116494 and CD80-rs3850890, were associated with DKD susceptibility. Using the Mendelian randomization analysis, our study provided evidence for a causal relationship between serum CD28 levels and DKD with T2DM in the Chinese population.


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