Observational associations between milk consumption and essential hypertension have been reported. However, their causal inferences have not been proven, and the effects of different types of milk consumption on hypertension risk remain poorly characterized. The Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was performed using public summary-level statistics from genome-wide association studies to determine whether the different types of milk consumption affect essential hypertension differently. Six different milk consumption types were defined as exposure conditions, whereas essential hypertension identified by the ninth and tenth revisions of the International Classification of Diseases was considered the outcome of interest. Genetic variants, which were genome-wide associated with the types of milk consumed, were used as an instrumental variable for MR analysis. In primary MR analysis, the inverse-variance weighted method was adopted followed by several sensitivity analyses. Our findings suggested that of the 6 common types of milk consumed, semi-skimmed and soya milk products were protective against essential hypertension, whereas skim milk had the opposite effect. Consistent results were also observed in sensitivity analyses that followed. The present study provided genetic evidence that a causal link between milk consumption and the risk of essential hypertension and a new reference for the diet antihypertensive treatment plan for patients with hypertension.
Keywords: Mendelian randomization; causal inferences; essential hypertension; saturated fatty acids.
The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. and Fass Inc. on behalf of the American Dairy Science Association®. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).