Department of Physical Education and Arts, Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China.
Graduate School, Adamson University, Manila, Philippines.
Medicine (Baltimore). 2024 Jun 14;103(24):e38561. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000038561.
Several studies have reported a potential association between the gut microbiota (GM) and scoliosis. However, the causal relationship between GM and scoliosis and the role of inflammatory factors (IFs) as mediators remain unclear. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between GM, IFs, and scoliosis. We investigated whether IFs act as mediators in pathways from the GM to scoliosis. Additionally, using reverse Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis, we further investigated the potential impact of genetic predisposition to scoliosis on the GM and IFs. In this study, we searched for publicly available genome-wide association study aggregate data and utilized the MR method to establish bidirectional causal relationships among 211 GM taxa, 91 IFs, and scoliosis. To ensure the reliability of our research findings, we employed 5 MR methods, with the inverse variance weighting approach serving as the primary statistical method, and assessed the robustness of the results through various sensitivity analyses. Additionally, we investigated whether IFs mediate pathways from GM to scoliosis. Three negative causal correlations were observed between the genetic predisposition to GM and scoliosis. Additionally, both positive and negative correlations were found between IFs and scoliosis, with 3 positive and 3 negative correlations observed. IFs do not appear to act as mediators in the pathway from GM to scoliosis. In conclusion, this study demonstrated a causal association between the GM, IFs, and scoliosis, indicating that IFs are not mediators in the pathway from the GM to scoliosis. These findings offer new insights into prevention and treatment strategies for scoliosis.
几项研究报告了肠道微生物群（GM）和脊柱侧凸之间存在潜在的关联。然而，GM 和脊柱侧凸之间的因果关系以及炎症因子（IFs）作为中介物的作用仍不清楚。本研究旨在分析 GM、IFs 和脊柱侧凸之间的关系。我们调查了 IFs 是否作为 GM 到脊柱侧凸途径中的中介物发挥作用。此外，我们还使用反向孟德尔随机化（MR）分析进一步研究了脊柱侧凸的遗传易感性对 GM 和 IFs 的潜在影响。在本研究中，我们搜索了公开的全基因组关联研究汇总数据，并利用 MR 方法建立了 211 种 GM 分类群、91 种 IFs 和脊柱侧凸之间的双向因果关系。为了确保研究结果的可靠性，我们采用了 5 种 MR 方法，其中逆方差加权法是主要的统计方法，并通过各种敏感性分析来评估结果的稳健性。此外，我们还研究了 IFs 是否在 GM 到脊柱侧凸的途径中起中介作用。观察到 GM 与脊柱侧凸遗传易感性之间存在 3 个负向因果关联。IFs 与脊柱侧凸之间也存在正向和负向关联，其中观察到 3 个正向和 3 个负向关联。IFs 似乎不是 GM 到脊柱侧凸途径中的中介物。总之，本研究表明 GM、IFs 和脊柱侧凸之间存在因果关联，表明 IFs 不是 GM 到脊柱侧凸途径中的中介物。这些发现为脊柱侧凸的预防和治疗策略提供了新的见解。
