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. 2024 Aug 19;17(1):216.
doi: 10.1186/s12920-024-01939-y.

The causal effect of gut microbiota on hepatic encephalopathy: a mendelian randomization analysis

Jia-Lin Wu #  1 , Jun-Wei Chen #  1 , Ming-Sheng Huang #  1 , Xin-Yi Deng  2 , Jia-Jun Deng  3 , Tsz Yu Lau  2 , Shi-Yu Cao  4 , Hui-Ying Ran  2 , Zai-Bo Jiang  5 , Jun-Yang Luo  6
Affiliations

The causal effect of gut microbiota on hepatic encephalopathy: a mendelian randomization analysis

Jia-Lin Wu et al. BMC Med Genomics. .

Abstract

Background: There is growing evidence for a relationship between gut microbiota and hepatic encephalopathy (HE). However, the causal nature of the relationship between gut microbiota and HE has not been thoroughly investigated.

Method: This study utilized the large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) summary statistics to evaluate the causal association between gut microbiota and HE risk. Specifically, two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) approach was used to identify the causal microbial taxa for HE. The inverse variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary MR analysis. Sensitive analyses were performed to validate the robustness of the results.

Results: The IVW method revealed that the genus Bifidobacterium (OR = 0.363, 95% CI: 0.139-0.943, P = 0.037), the family Bifidobacteriaceae (OR = 0.359, 95% CI: 0.133-0.950, P = 0.039), and the order Bifidobacteriales (OR = 0.359, 95% CI: 0.133-0.950, P = 0.039) were negatively associated with HE. However, no causal relationship was observed among them after the Bonferroni correction test. Neither heterogeneity nor horizontal pleiotropy was found in the sensitivity analysis.

Conclusion: Our MR study demonstrated a potential causal association between Bifidobacterium, Bifidobacteriaceae, and Bifidobacteriales and HE. This finding may provide new therapeutic targets for patients at risk of HE in the future.

Keywords: Causal relationship; Gut microbiota; Gut-liver-brain axis; Hepatic encephalopathy; Mendelian randomization.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow chart of the present MR study showing the causal association between gut microbiota and hepatic encephalopathy. SNPs, single-nucleotide polymorphism; MR, Mendelian randomization; IVW, inverse variance-weighted; MR-RAPS, MR-Robust adjusted profile score
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The MR results for association between gut microbiota and HE. IVW, inverse variance-weighted; MR-RAPS, MR-Robust adjusted profile score. HE, hepatic encephalopathy
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Crass-talk between gut microbiota and hepatic encephalopathy via the gut-liver-brain axis
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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