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. 2023 Jun 29;18(6):e0287756.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287756. eCollection 2023.

Association between caffeine consumption and bone mineral density in children and adolescent: Observational and Mendelian randomization study

Aiyong Cui  1 , Peilun Xiao  2 , Jing He  1 , Zhiqiang Fan  1 , Mengli Xie  1 , Long Chen  1 , Yan Zhuang  1 , Hu Wang  1
Affiliations

Association between caffeine consumption and bone mineral density in children and adolescent: Observational and Mendelian randomization study

Aiyong Cui et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Coffee is the most commonly consumed beverage among children and adolescences. Caffeine was demonstrated to be associated with bone metabolism. However, the relationship between caffeine intake and BMD in children and adolescents remains unclear. This study aimed to identified relationship between caffeine consumption and bone mineral density (BMD) in children and adolescents.

Methods: Based on National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we conducted an epidemiological cross-section study to measure the relationship between caffeine consumption and BMD in children and adolescents by multivariate linear regression models. Then, five methods of Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses were performed to estimate their causal relationship between coffee and caffeine intake and BMD in children and adolescents. MR-Egger and inverse-variance weighted (IVW) were used to evaluate the heterogeneity effect of instrumental variables (IVs).

Results: In epidemiological studies, individuals with the highest quartile of caffeine intake do not have a significant change in femur neck BMD (β = 0.0016, 95% CI: -0.0096, 0.0129, P = 0.7747), total femur BMD (β = 0.0019, P = 0.7552), and total spine BMD (β = 0.0081, P = 0.1945) compared with the lowest quartile. In MR analysis, the IVW-random effect indicates no causal relationship between coffee consumption and TB- BMD (β = 0.0034, P = 0.0910). Other methods of MR analyses and sensitivity analysis reveals consistent findings. Similarly, the fixed-effects IVW method shows no causal association between caffeine intake and TB-BMD in children and adolescents (β = 0.0202, P = 0.7828).

Conclusions: Our study does not support a causal relationship between caffeine consumption and BMD in children and adolescents. However, more studies are needed to verify our findings, such as its underlying molecular mechanisms and the long-term impact of early caffeine exposure at a younger age.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The study design of two‐sample MR analysis.
Fig 2
Fig 2. The scatter plot for MR analyses of causal associations between coffee consumption SNP and TB-BMD.
Abbreviations: TB-BMD: total body bone mineral density. IVW: inverse-variance weighted.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Forest plot to visualize causal effect of each single SNP of coffee consumption and TB-BMD.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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