Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Mar 28;131(6):1007-1014.
doi: 10.1017/S0007114523002556. Epub 2023 Nov 6.

Causal effects of dietary habits on COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalisation and severity: a comprehensive Mendelian randomisation study

Xiaoping Li #  1 , Ningning Wang #  2 , Congjie Wang  1 , Xiaoqing Chen  1 , Sai Chen  3 , Wei Jiang  1
Affiliations

Causal effects of dietary habits on COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalisation and severity: a comprehensive Mendelian randomisation study

Xiaoping Li et al. Br J Nutr. .

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the causal effect of dietary habits on COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalisation and severity. We used data from a large-scale diet dataset and the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative to estimate causal relationships using Mendelian randomisation. The inverse variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the main analysis. For COVID-19 susceptibility, IVW estimates indicated that milk (OR: 0·82; 95 % CI (0·68, 0·98); P = 0·032), unsalted peanut (OR: 0·53; 95 % CI (0·35, 0·82); P = 0·004), beef (OR: 0·59; 95 % CI (0·41, 0·84); P = 0·004), pork (OR: 0·63; 95 % CI (0·42, 0·93); P = 0·022) and processed meat (OR: 0·76; 95 % CI (0·63, 0·92); P = 0·005) were causally associated with reduced COVID-19 susceptibility, while coffee (OR: 1·23; 95 % CI (1·04, 1·45); P = 0·017) and tea (OR: 1·17; 95 % CI (1·05, 1·31); P = 0·006) were causally associated with increased risk. For COVID-19 hospitalisation, beef (OR: 0·51; 95 % CI (0·26, 0·98); P = 0·042) showed negative correlations, while tea (OR: 1·54; 95 % CI (1·16, 2·04); P = 0·003), dried fruit (OR: 2·08; 95 % CI (1·37, 3·15); P = 0·001) and red wine (OR: 2·35; 95 % CI (1·29, 4·27); P = 0·005) showed positive correlations. For COVID-19 severity, coffee (OR: 2·16; 95 % CI (1·25, 3·76); P = 0·006), dried fruit (OR: 1·98; 95 % CI (1·16, 3·37); P = 0·012) and red wine (OR: 2·84; 95 % CI (1·21, 6·68); P = 0·017) showed an increased risk. These findings were confirmed to be robust through sensitivity analyses. Our findings established a causal relationship between dietary habits and COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalisation and severity.

Keywords: COVID-19; Causal effect; Dietary habit; Lifestyle; Mendelian randomisation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Study design. GWAS, genome-wide association study; MR, Mendelian randomisation; IV, instrumental variable.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Causal effect of dietary habits on COVID-19 susceptibility: MR estimates from IVW method. MR, Mendelian randomisation; IVW, inverse variance weighted.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Causal effect of dietary habits on COVID-19 hospitalisation: MR estimates from IVW method. MR, Mendelian randomisation; IVW, inverse variance weighted.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Causal effect of dietary habits on COVID-19 severity: MR estimates from IVW method. MR, Mendelian randomisation; IVW, inverse variance weighted.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Guan WJ, Ni ZY, Hu Y, et al. (2020) Clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in China. N Engl J Med 382, 1708–1720. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wang D, Hu B, Hu C, et al. (2020) Clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia in Wuhan, China. JAMA 323, 1061–1069. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kelly SL, Le Rutte EA, Richter M, et al. (2022) COVID-19 vaccine booster strategies in light of emerging viral variants: frequency, timing, and target groups. Infect Dis Ther 11, 2045–2061. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sinha S, Ajayababu A, Thukral H, et al. (2022) Efficacy of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination in reducing the incidence and severity of COVID-19 in high-risk population (BRIC): a Phase III, multi-centre, quadruple-blind randomised control trial. Infect Dis Ther 11, 2205–2217. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Surendranath M, Wankhedkar R, Lele J, et al. (2022) A modern perspective on vaccinating healthcare service providers in India: a narrative review. Infect Dis Ther 11, 81–99. - PMC - PubMed