Abstract
Background
Previous observational studies focused on the association of coffee consumption and neurological disease. However, it is not known whether these associations are causal.
Methods
We used Mendelian randomization (MR) study to assess the causal relationship of coffee intake with the risk of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, stroke, and migraine. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which had genetic statistical significance with coffee intake were used as instrumental variable (IV). Genetic instruments were stretched from the MRC-IEU (MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit) analysis on the UK Biobank. We performed MR analyses using the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method as the main approach. Sensitivity analyses were further performed using MR-Egger and MR-PRESSO to assess the robustness.
Results
In the MR analysis, 40 SNPs were selected as IV, the F statistics for all SNPs ranged from 16 to 359. In IVW approach, our results provide genetic evidence supporting a potential causal association between coffee intake and a lower risk of migraine (OR = 0.528, 95% CI = 0.342–0.817, P = 0.004) and migraine with aura (OR = 0.374, 95% CI = 0.208–0.672, P = 0.001). However, we found no significant association between coffee intake and other neurological diseases along with their subtypes in this MR study.
Conclusion
Using genetic data, our MR study found significant evidence supporting a causal association between coffee intake and migraine. This suggests that coffee consumption is likely a trigger or a prevention strategy for migraine.
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Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its additional files.
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Acknowledgements
We extend our sincere thanks to Ben Elsworth for releasing GWAS summary statistics for coffee intake. The AD data was obtained from the IGAP consortium, the PD data from the IPDGC consortium, the ALS data from the AVS consortium, the MS data from the IMSGC consortium, and the epilepsy and its subtypes data from the ILAE consortium. We also thank the MEGASTROKE Consortium for providing summary statistics data for stroke and its subtypes. The data for nontraumatic intracranial hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and migraine were obtained from the FinnGen consortium. We sincerely thank all participants for sharing the genome-wide summary statistics.
Funding
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82260225), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (20202BAB216043), and Jiangxi Province Postgraduate Innovation Special Fund Project (YC2022-B061).
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JZ, MZ, and DZ designed the research. JZ, YL, GX, XC, and WW acquired and analyzed data. JZ drafted the manuscript. MZ and DZ made critical revisions of the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Zhang, J., Liu, Y., Xu, G. et al. Causal relationship between coffee intake and neurological diseases: a Mendelian randomization study. Eur J Clin Nutr 78, 114–119 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-023-01355-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-023-01355-y