Edited by: Giulia Marrone, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Reviewed by: Tianlin Gao, Qingdao University, China; Nicolò Piacentini, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
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Diet is a safe intervention for many chronic diseases as a modifiable lifestyle. However, the potential causal effect of many dietary intake habits on the risk of osteoarthritis has not been fully understood. The purpose of this study was to reveal the potential causal relationship of 45 genetically predicted dietary intakes with osteoarthritis and its subtypes.
Data on 45 dietary intakes were obtained from the UK Biobank study of approximately 500,000 participants, and data on six osteoarthritis-related phenotypes were obtained from the Genetics of Osteoarthritis Consortium study of 826,690 participants. We performed univariable Mendelian randomization (MR), multivariable MR and linkage disequilibrium score regression (LDSC) analyses.
In univariate analyses, 59 potential associations between diet and osteoarthritis were found. After false discovery rate (FDR) correction and sensitivity analyses, 23 reliable causal evidence were identified. In multivariate analyses, controlling separately for the effects of body mass index, total body bone mineral density, and smoking status, eight robust causal relationships remained: Muesli intake was negatively associated with knee osteoarthritis, spine osteoarthritis and total knee replacement. Dried fruit intake had a negative association with osteoarthritis of knee and total knee replacement. Eating cheese may reduce the risk of osteoarthritis in the knee and spine. And alcohol usually taken with meals was associated with a reduced risk of total knee replacement. LDSC analyses showed significant genetic correlations between all exposures and their corresponding outcomes, respectively, in these eight causal relationships.
Evidence of dietary effects on osteoarthritis is provided in our study, which has important implications for the prevention, management, and intervention of osteoarthritis in common sites through rational dietary modification.
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Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common type of arthritis, which can affect one or more different joints throughout the body (
Several previous studies have suggested that dietary intake may play an important role in knee OA (
In this situation, Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses provide us with a suitable method to investigate the causal relationship between specific dietary intake and osteoarthritis, utilizing single nucleotide polymorphisms as instrumental variables (IVs), which are less susceptible to confounding factors because gametes are randomly assigned during gamete formation and are independent of environmental factors (
In this study, we performed comprehensive univariate MR, multivariate MR and LDSC analyses using the largest known Genome wide association study (GWAS) data on diet and osteoarthritis, and thereby explored the causal relationship between 45 dietary intake habits and six osteoarthritis phenotypes.
The flowchart of study design and analytic approach is shown in
The flowchart of study design and analytic approach.
We obtained summary-level data related to dietary intake habits through the IEU Open GWAS program from the UK Biobank study of approximately 500,000 participants, who were recruited at ages 40–69 years across England, Wales, and Scotland from 2006 to 2010 (
Data on osteoarthritis were from the largest meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on osteoarthritis to date, which included 13 cohorts with up to 826,690 participants (
Description of GWAS data sources for each phenotype.
Dataset type | Variable | GWAS ID | Sample size | Consortium | Journal | Population | Sex |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Exposure | Dietary habits | See |
MRC-IEU | Nature | European | Males and females | |
Body mass index (BMI) | ukb-b-19953 | 461,460 | MRC-IEU | Nature | European | Males and females | |
Total body bone mineral density | ebi-a-GCST005348 | 56,284 | NA | Am J Hum Genet. | European | Males and females | |
Ever smoked | ukb-b-20261 | 461,066 | MRC-IEU | Nature | European | Males and females | |
Outcome | Knee osteoarthritis (Knee OA) | NA | 396,054 | Genetics of Osteoarthritis (GO) | Cell | European (99%) | Males and females |
Hip osteoarthritis (Hip OA) | NA | 353,388 | Genetics of Osteoarthritis (GO) | Cell | European | Males and females | |
Spine osteoarthritis (Spine OA) | NA | 333,950 | Genetics of Osteoarthritis (GO) | Cell | European (99%) | Males and females | |
Hand osteoarthritis (Hand OA) | NA | 303,782 | Genetics of Osteoarthritis (GO) | Cell | European | Males and females | |
Total knee replacement (TKR) | NA | 252,041 | Genetics of Osteoarthritis (GO) | Cell | European | Males and females | |
Total hip replacement (THR) | NA | 319,037 | Genetics of Osteoarthritis (GO) | Cell | European | Males and females |
In order to include more SNPs as IVs to investigate more relationships between dietary intake habits and osteoarthritis, we used the threshold of
In the univariate analyses, we mainly used the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method for estimation. Heterogeneity was firstly tested for using the Cochran Q analysis, and if there was no heterogeneity, fixed-effects IVW (IVW-FE) model was used for the main analyses; otherwise, random-effects IVW (IVW-MRE) model was applied (
Finally, we performed LDSC analyses on the FDR-corrected positive results of univariate analyses to assess the genetic correlation (Rg) of the 2 phenotypes in each causal pair, using LDSC software package
In univariate analyses, we analyzed the causal association of 45 dietary intake habits with four different sites of osteoarthritis and two types of end-stage osteoarthritis. Out of the 270 results analyzed, we identified 59 potential pieces of evidence for causality without pleiotropy. The results of the causal associations between the 45 dietary intakes and the 6 osteoarthritis phenotypes using IVW method were presented in
Mendelian randomization associations between the 45 dietary intakes and the 6 osteoarthritis phenotypes using IVW method.
The assessment of the strength of potential causal associations after
The multivariate analyses were further analyzed for the 23 reliable causal relationships screened. After adjusting separately for BMI, TB-BMD, and ever smoked, which were common risk factors for osteoarthritis, 8 causality estimates remained statistically significant: the effects of muesli intake on Knee OA, Spine OA and TKR; the effects of dried fruit intake on Knee OA and TKR; the effects of eating cheese on Knee OA and Spine OA; and the effect of alcohol usually taken with meals on TKR. Consistent with the results of univariate MR analyses, the multivariable MR analysis results supported that the 4 dietary intake habits above were protective against OA without pleiotropy in MR Egger intercept tests. The results of multivariable MR were shown in
The causal relationships that still held after further multivariate analyses of 23 reliable evidence.
Finally, we performed the LDSC analyses on all positive results corrected for FDR. The LDSC results showed significant genetic correlations for all causal relationships involving the Knee OA, Spine OA and TKR phenotypes, which genetically validated the potential for dietary management of osteoarthritis of the knee and osteoarthritis of the spine. And we also found that of the 8 causal relationships ultimately screened by multivariate analyses, all exposures were also significantly genetically correlated with their respective corresponding outcomes, as shown in
LDSC analysis results of 8 causal associations in
Phenotype 1 | Phenotype 2 | Rg | Se | Pval |
---|---|---|---|---|
Cereal type: Muesli | Knee OA | −0.277 | 0.037 | 4.48E-14 |
Dried fruit intake | Knee OA | −0.155 | 0.032 | 1.64E-06 |
Cheese intake | Knee OA | −0.208 | 0.029 | 9.67E-13 |
Cereal type: Muesli | Spine OA | −0.331 | 0.048 | 5.87E-12 |
Cheese intake | Spine OA | −0.327 | 0.046 | 7.73E-13 |
Cereal type: Muesli | TKR | −0.307 | 0.042 | 1.60E-13 |
Dried fruit intake | TKR | −0.212 | 0.037 | 7.79E-09 |
Alcohol usually taken with meals | TKR | −0.206 | 0.034 | 1.15E-09 |
Rg, genetic correlation.
We analyzed the overall effect of 45 common dietary intake habits on 6 subtypes related to osteoarthritis and identified 59 potential causal associations, including 23 reliable associations, 8 causally insufficient associations, and 1 weak association. We found that cheese intake was negatively associated with the risk of most osteoarthritis phenotypes, whereas coffee intake was positively associated. From the osteoarthritis perspective, we found that the occurrence of Knee OA and TKR (end-stage Knee OA) was influenced by many dietary factors. Some dietary intakes were associated with risk of Spinal OA, while most dietary intake habits were not significantly associated with other osteoarthritis phenotypes. Using multivariate analyses, we identified that 4 dietary intake habits (muesli, dried fruit, cheese intake and alcohol usually taken with meals) were associated with a reduced risk of osteoarthritis and that there might be underlying mechanisms other than those influenced through BMI, TB-BMD and smoking status. And the results of LDSC showed significant genetic correlations in each of the 8 causal pairs.
For the effect of coffee and tea intake on OA, our findings are consistent with previous similar univariate MR studies (
In previous observational analyses, higher whole grain intake was found to be related with a lower risk of knee osteoarthritis (
In previous studies, grains have been shown to be a beneficial dietary factor in the management of chronic diseases, with positive effects on a number of cancers, cardiovascular diseases and overweight and obesity (
Conventional views suggest that fresh fruits are beneficial for chronic diseases including osteoarthritis, however, our study did not find a significant association between fresh fruits and OA, but instead unexpectedly found that dried fruit intake was negatively associated with Knee OA and TKR risk. Dried fruits are obtained through a series of drying techniques on fresh fruits and their nutrient content remains similar to the equivalent fresh fruits but more concentrated (
Cheese has long been favored as a healthy diet rich in protein as well as minerals. It has beneficial effects on the musculoskeletal system, and many studies have shown that daily dietary dairy intake significantly increases bone mineral content (
The effect of alcohol consumption on osteoarthritis in previous observational studies has been less consistent, probably mainly because of the plethora of confounding factors associated with alcohol consumption. It has been shown that excessive alcohol consumption can worsen osteoarthritis by increasing synovial fluid uric acid levels and elevating pro-inflammatory cytokine levels (
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the causal relationship between multiple dietary intakes and osteoarthritis in various parts of the body by means of MR analysis, which can avoid confounding factors as well as reverse causality. The majority of previous studies on diet and osteoarthritis have focused on the impact of obesity on Knee OA due to dietary factors, with a small number of studies exploring the effect of a particular dietary intake on Knee OA. Our study took advantage of MR to include 45 dietary intakes as well as 6 osteoarthritis phenotypes, with exposure and outcome data from the largest sample size dataset available. And after controlling for recognized risk factors such as BMI, we found that certain dietary intakes were still associated with their counterparts in osteoarthritis, implying that there are more other potential mechanisms of dietary influence on osteoarthritis that need to be explored in future studies. In terms of dietary intake, we identified several new factors associated with osteoarthritis, such as dried fruit intake, hot drink temperature, and different drinking habits; and for osteoarthritis, we identified the potential for knee and spine osteoarthritis to be prevented, as well as managed, through diet. Our study provides evidence and references for future studies exploring the in-depth mechanisms of diet and osteoarthritis.
Our study also has some limitations. Firstly, due to lack of the age and gender information from the summary-level GWAS results, this study cannot conduct a stratified analysis of OA based on these factors. Secondly, dietary habits were assessed using a touch-screen questionnaire, which may lead to bias in the assessment as well as in the analyses. Thirdly, Causal associations with pleiotropy or inconsistent directions of the 4 MR analysis methods were not processed further, but rather excluded from the results by directly defining that no association was found, but this does not indicate that these dietary habits are absolutely unrelated to OA. Fourthly, dietary intake habits were used as the exposure phenotype and we did not examine the effect of nutrients on OA. However, a recent study emphasized the matrix effect produced by food (
Our study provides relatively solid evidence for a causal relationship between dietary factors and osteoarthritis. Most importantly, we identified that cereals, dried fruits, cheese and alcohol usually taken with meals intake remained negatively associated with some OA risk after controlling for BMI, TB-BMD and smoking status. In addition, we found the potential for multiple dietary interventions, management and prevention of knee and spine osteoarthritis. Our study has important implications for the prevention, management, and intervention of osteoarthritis in common sites through rational dietary modification.
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
ZX: Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft. YQ: Supervision, Writing – review & editing.
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
We are grateful to the IEU Open GWAS Project and the Genetics of Osteoarthritis (GO) consortium for providing summary statistics.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at:
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