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. 2024 Apr 12;29(1):227.
doi: 10.1186/s40001-024-01781-z.

Genetically predicted dietary macronutrient intakes and atrial fibrillation risk: a Mendelian randomization study

Zhuoya Zhang #  1 , Jiale Zhang #  2 , Haoyang Jiao #  3 , Wei Tian  4 , Xu Zhai  5
Affiliations

Genetically predicted dietary macronutrient intakes and atrial fibrillation risk: a Mendelian randomization study

Zhuoya Zhang et al. Eur J Med Res. .

Abstract

Background and aim: Previous observational investigations have indicated a potential association between relative dietary macronutrient intakes and atrial fibrillation and flutter (AF) risk. In this study, we employed Mendelian Randomization (MR) to evaluate the presence of causality and to elucidate the specific causal relationship.

Methods: We employed six, five, and three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as instrumental variables for relative carbohydrate, protein, and fat intake, identified from a genome-wide association study that included 268,922 individuals of European descent. Furthermore, we acquired summary statistics for genome-wide association studies on AF from the FinnGen consortium, which involved 22,068 cases and 116,926 controls. To evaluate the causal estimates, we utilized the random effect inverse variance weighted method (IVW) and several other MR methods, including MR-Egger, weighted median, and MR-PRESSO, to confirm the robustness of our findings.

Results: Our analysis indicates a convincing causal relationship between genetically predicted relative carbohydrate and protein intake and reduced AF risk. Inverse variance weighted analysis results for carbohydrates (OR = 0.29; 95% CI (0.14, 0.59); P < 0.001) and protein (OR = 0.47; 95% CI (0.26, 0.85); P = 0.01) support this association. Our MR analysis did not identify a significant causal relationship between relative fat intake and AF risk.

Conclusion: Our study provides evidence supporting a causal relationship between higher relative protein and carbohydrate intake and a lower risk of atrial fibrillation (AF).

Keywords: Atrial fibrillation risk; Cardiovascular disease; Dietary macronutrient intake; Mendelian randomization.

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Conflict of interest statement

All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Mendelian randomization analyses to investigate associations between relative macronutrient intakes and the risk of atrial fibrillation and flutter. The broken lines signify potential causal effects (pleiotropic or direct) between variables that would violate the assumptions of Mendelian randomization
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The odds ratios (OR) depicting the associations between genetically predicted relative macronutrient intake and AF risk are presented. CI confidence interval; MR Mendelian randomization
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The leave-one-out analyses revealed no significant differences in the estimated causal effects when individual SNPs were removed from our MR analysis. A MR leave-one-out sensitivity analysis for ' carbohydrate ' on 'AF'. B MR leave-one-out sensitivity analysis for 'protein' on 'AF'. C MR leave-one-out sensitivity analysis for ' fat ' on 'AF'
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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