Aim: This study aimed to determine the causal association between salt added to food and body mass index (BMI) by integrating a summary-level genome-wide association study (GWAS) data.
Methods: We performed two-sample Mendelian randomisation (MR) analyses using summary statistics of GWAS. Inverse-variance weighted (IVW), maximum likelihood estimation, and random effect model were used to analyse the effect of salt added to food on BMI. A bidirectional MR analysis with BMI as the exposure and salt added to food as the outcome was also performed.
Results: The single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected from the UK Biobank (n = 462 630) and a meta-analysis of 322 154 European-descent individuals. The IVW method estimate indicated that salt added to food was positively associated with BMI (β = 0.1416, SE = 0.0576, P = .0139). Results from maximum likelihood estimation (β = 0.1476, SE = 0.0363, P < .0001) and the random effect model (β = 0.1411, SE = 0.0572, P = .0137) were consistent with the IVW. Bidirectional MR analysis suggested that BMI did not causally affect salt added to food.
Conclusion: Our results provided qualitative evidence supporting a causal relationship between salt intake and BMI.
Keywords: Mendelian randomisation; body mass index; salt added to food; salt intake.
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