Associations of dietary factors with gastric cancer risk: insights from NHANES 2003-2016 and mendelian randomization analyses

Yigang Zhang; Sen Wang; Qingya Li; Hongda Liu; Zhe Xuan; Fengyuan Li; Zheng Li; Yiwen Xia; Tianlu Jiang; Penghui Xu; Lang Fang; Linjun Wang; Diancai Zhang; Hao Xu; Li Yang; Zekuan Xu

doi:10.3389/fgene.2024.1377434

Associations of dietary factors with gastric cancer risk: insights from NHANES 2003-2016 and mendelian randomization analyses

Front Genet. 2024 May 2:15:1377434. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2024.1377434. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Yigang Zhang^#¹, Sen Wang^#¹, Qingya Li^#¹, Hongda Liu¹, Zhe Xuan¹, Fengyuan Li¹, Zheng Li¹, Yiwen Xia¹, Tianlu Jiang¹, Penghui Xu¹, Lang Fang¹, Linjun Wang¹, Diancai Zhang¹, Hao Xu¹, Li Yang¹, Zekuan Xu^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Personalized Medicine, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
³ The Institute of Gastric Cancer, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Gastric cancer (GC) continues to be one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths globally. Diet significantly influences the incidence and progression of GC. However, the relationship between dietary intake and GC is inconsistent. Methods: A study was conducted with adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003 to 2016 to investigate possible associations between 32 dietary factors and GC. To further detect potential causal relationships between these dietary factors and the risk of GC, a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was conducted. The primary method employed was the inverse variance weighted (IVW) analysis, and its results were further validated by four other methods. Results: Of the 35,098 participants surveyed, 20 had a history of GC. Based on the results of weighted logistic multivariate analysis, it was observed that there was a positive correlation between total fat intake [odds ratio (OR) = 1.09, 95% confidence interval (CI): (1.01-1.17), p = 0.03] and GC as well as negative association of dietary monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) intake [OR = 0.83, 95% CI: (0.76-0.92), p < 0.001]. Further evaluations of the odds of GC across the quartiles of dietary MUFAs showed that the top quartile of total MUFA intake was associated with a lower likelihood of GC in three different models [model1: OR = 0.03, 95% CI: (0.00-0.25), p < 0.01; model2: OR = 0.04, 95% CI: (0.00-0.38), p = 0.01; model3: OR = 0.04, 95% CI: (0.00-0.40), p = 0.01]. For the MR analyses, genetic instruments were selected from the IEU Open GWAS project; IVW analysis showed that GC risk was not associated with MUFAs [OR = 0.82, 95% CI: (0.59-1.14), p = 0.23] or the ratio of MUFAs to total fatty acids [OR = 1.00, 95% CI: (0.75-1.35), p = 0.98]. Similar results were observed when using the other MR methods. Conclusion: The NHANES study revealed that consuming MUFAs was linked to a lower risk of GC, although the results of MR analyses do not provide evidence of a causal relationship. Additional research is therefore necessary to clarify these findings.

Keywords: MUFA; Mendelian randomization; NHANES; dietary factors; gastric cancer.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos 81871946, 82072708, and 82202849); the Special Foundation for National Science and Technology Basic Research Program of China (grant no. 2019FY101104); the Primary Research & Development Plan of Jiangsu Province (grant no. BE2016786); the Program for Development of Innovative Research Team in the First Affiliated Hospital of NJMU; the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (grant nos PAPD, JX10231, and 801); the Jiangsu Key Medical Discipline (General Surgery) (grant no. ZDXKA2016005); the Jiangsu Key Lab of Cancer Biomarkers, Prevention and Treatment, Collaborative Innovation Centre for Cancer Personalized Medicine, Nanjing Medical University; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant no. 2021TQ0132); and The Youth Fund Program for the National Natural Science Foundation of China from the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University (grant no. PY2021032).