Causal relationship between dietary intake and IgA nephropathy: a Mendelian randomization study.

OBJECTIVE

Previous studies have reported that dietary intake is associated with immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN). However, the causal relationship remains unknown. Based on publicly available genome-wide association study (GWAS) data, we conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to assess the causal association between 26 dietary exposures and IgAN.

METHODS

Five methods, including inverse variance weighting (IVW), MR-Egger regression, weighted median, simple mode, and weighted mode, were applied in the MR analysis. To identify the presence of horizontal pleiotropy, we used the MR-Egger intercept test and MR pleiotropy residual sum and outlier (MR-PRESSO) global test. Cochran's Q statistics were used to assess instrument heterogeneity. We conducted sensitivity analysis using the leave-one-out method.

RESULTS

Finally, the results indicated alcohol intake frequency (odds ratio [OR] (95% confidence interval [CI]) = 1.267 (1.100-1.460),  = 0.0010295) was a risk factor of IgAN, while cheese intake (OR (95% CI) = 0.626 (0.492-0.798),  = 0.0001559), cereal intake (OR (95% CI) = 0.652 (0.439-0.967),  = 0.0334126), and sushi intake (OR (95% CI) = 0.145 (0.021-0.997),  = 0.0497) were protective factors of IgAN. No causal relationship was found between IgAN and the rest of the dietary exposures.

CONCLUSION

Our study provided genetic evidence that alcohol intake frequency was associated with an increased risk of IgAN, while cheese, cereal, and sushi intake were associated with a decreased risk of IgAN. Further investigation is required to confirm these results.