S-C Bae1, Y H Lee2. 1. Department of Rheumatology, Hanyang University Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, Seoul, Korea (Republic of). 2. Department of Rheumatology, Korea University College of Medicine, 73, Inchon-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Korea (Republic of). lyhcgh@korea.ac.kr.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To examine whether alcohol intake is causally associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS: We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW), weighted median, and MR-Egger regression methods. We used the publicly available summary statistics of alcohol intake frequency from the UK Biobank genome-wide association studies (GWASs; n = 336,965) as the exposure and a GWAS meta-analysis of 5539 autoantibody-positive RA patients and 20,169 controls as the outcome. RESULTS: We selected 24 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with alcohol intake frequency at genome-wide significance as instrumental variables (IVs) to improve inference, 16 of which were inversely associated with RA. The IVW method showed no evidence of a causal association between alcohol intake and RA (beta = 0.218, SE = 0.213, p = 0.306). The MR-Egger regression revealed that directional pleiotropy was unlikely to bias the result (intercept = 0.027, p = 0.292). The MR-Egger analysis and the weighted median approach showed no causal association between alcohol intake and RA (beta = -0.778, SE = 0.947, p = 0.420 and beta = -0.286, SE = 0.302, p = 0.344, respectively). Cochran's Q test did not indicate heterogeneity between IV estimates based on the individual variants, and results from a "leave-one-out" analysis demonstrated that no single SNP was driving the IVW point estimate. CONCLUSION: The MR analysis does not support a causal inverse association between alcohol intake and RA occurrence.
OBJECTIVE: To examine whether alcohol intake is causally associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS: We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW), weighted median, and MR-Egger regression methods. We used the publicly available summary statistics of alcohol intake frequency from the UK Biobank genome-wide association studies (GWASs; n = 336,965) as the exposure and a GWAS meta-analysis of 5539 autoantibody-positive RApatients and 20,169 controls as the outcome. RESULTS: We selected 24 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with alcohol intake frequency at genome-wide significance as instrumental variables (IVs) to improve inference, 16 of which were inversely associated with RA. The IVW method showed no evidence of a causal association between alcohol intake and RA (beta = 0.218, SE = 0.213, p = 0.306). The MR-Egger regression revealed that directional pleiotropy was unlikely to bias the result (intercept = 0.027, p = 0.292). The MR-Egger analysis and the weighted median approach showed no causal association between alcohol intake and RA (beta = -0.778, SE = 0.947, p = 0.420 and beta = -0.286, SE = 0.302, p = 0.344, respectively). Cochran's Q test did not indicate heterogeneity between IV estimates based on the individual variants, and results from a "leave-one-out" analysis demonstrated that no single SNP was driving the IVW point estimate. CONCLUSION: The MR analysis does not support a causal inverse association between alcohol intake and RA occurrence.
Entities:
Keywords:
Alcohol intake; Genetic predisposition to disease; Genome-wide association study; Mendelian randomization; Rheumatoid arthritis
Authors: Eli A Stahl; Soumya Raychaudhuri; Elaine F Remmers; Gang Xie; Stephen Eyre; Brian P Thomson; Yonghong Li; Fina A S Kurreeman; Alexandra Zhernakova; Anne Hinks; Candace Guiducci; Robert Chen; Lars Alfredsson; Christopher I Amos; Kristin G Ardlie; Anne Barton; John Bowes; Elisabeth Brouwer; Noel P Burtt; Joseph J Catanese; Jonathan Coblyn; Marieke J H Coenen; Karen H Costenbader; Lindsey A Criswell; J Bart A Crusius; Jing Cui; Paul I W de Bakker; Philip L De Jager; Bo Ding; Paul Emery; Edward Flynn; Pille Harrison; Lynne J Hocking; Tom W J Huizinga; Daniel L Kastner; Xiayi Ke; Annette T Lee; Xiangdong Liu; Paul Martin; Ann W Morgan; Leonid Padyukov; Marcel D Posthumus; Timothy R D J Radstake; David M Reid; Mark Seielstad; Michael F Seldin; Nancy A Shadick; Sophia Steer; Paul P Tak; Wendy Thomson; Annette H M van der Helm-van Mil; Irene E van der Horst-Bruinsma; C Ellen van der Schoot; Piet L C M van Riel; Michael E Weinblatt; Anthony G Wilson; Gert Jan Wolbink; B Paul Wordsworth; Cisca Wijmenga; Elizabeth W Karlson; Rene E M Toes; Niek de Vries; Ann B Begovich; Jane Worthington; Katherine A Siminovitch; Peter K Gregersen; Lars Klareskog; Robert M Plenge Journal: Nat Genet Date: 2010-05-09 Impact factor: 38.330