Dietary precursors and cardiovascular disease: A Mendelian randomization study

Wangwei Jing; Shushi Huang; Pingping Xiang; Jiniu Huang; Hong Yu

doi:10.3389/fcvm.2023.1061119

Dietary precursors and cardiovascular disease: A Mendelian randomization study

Front Cardiovasc Med. 2023 Feb 9:10:1061119. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2023.1061119. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Wangwei Jing¹, Shushi Huang¹, Pingping Xiang¹, Jiniu Huang¹, Hong Yu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Cardiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
² Department of Cardiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Background: The Dietary precursor has been identified as a contributor in the development of cardiovascular disease. However, it is inconsistent if dietary precursors could affect the process of cardiovascular disease.

Methods: Here we performed Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis of the data from genome-wide association study of European ancestry to evaluate the independent effects of three dietary precursors on cardiovascular disease (CVD), myocardial infarction (MI), heart failure (HF), atrial fibrillation (AF), and valvular disease (VHD). Inverse variance weighting method was used for the MR estimation. Sensitivity was determined by MR-PRESSO analysis, weighted median analysis, MR-Egger analysis, and Leave-one-out analysis.

Results: We found that elevated choline level had a causal relationship with VHD [odds ratio (OR) = 1.087, 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.003-1.178, P = 0.041] and MI (OR = 1.250, 95% CI, 1.041-1.501, P = 0.017) by single-variable MR analysis. Furthermore, elevated carnitine level was associated with MI (OR = 5.007, 95% CI, 1.693-14.808, P = 0.004) and HF (OR = 2.176, 95% CI, 1.252-3.780, P = 0.006) risk. In addition, elevated phosphatidylcholine level can increase the risk of MI (OR = 1.197, 95% CI, 1.026-1.397, P = 0.022).

Conclusion: Our data show that choline increases VHD or MI risk, carnitine increases the risk of MI or HF, and phosphatidylcholine increases HF risk. These findings suggest the possibility that decrease in choline level in circulation may be able to reduce overall VHD or MI risk, reduce in carnitine level could be decrease MI and HF risks as well as decrease in phosphatidylcholine could reduce MI risk.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis; cardiovascular disease; carnitine; choline; dietary precursors.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 82070448) and Self-developed project of Binjiang Research Institute of Zhejiang University (ZY202205SMKY008).