A Mendelian randomization study on the causal relationship between serum trimethylamine-n-oxide levels and glioblastoma
Tang Jiawen
Cong Linghua
Chen Fang
Zhang Jifang
Abstract：Objective To investigate the causal relationship between serum trimethylamine-N-oxide(TMAO)levels and glioblastoma(GBM)using Mendelian randomization(MR).Methods Data on serum TMAO and GBM with confirmed associations were selected from genome-wide association study(GWAS)databases.Serum TMAO levels were set as the exposure,and GBM as the outcome for forward analysis,while the reverse was performed for reverse analysis.The inverse variance weighted(IVW)method was used as the primary outcome measure,supplemented by the weighted median(WME)method.Pleiotropy,heterogeneity,outliers,and sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess the stability of the results.Results The IVW results indicated a statistically significant positive correlation between genetically determined serum TMAO levels and GBM risk(OR=0.87,95%CI:0.75-0.94,P＜0.05).Although no significance significance was observed in WME further validation(P=0.058),the other three methods showed significant results(P＜0.05),their estimates were consistent with the IVW direction(OR＜1).Reverse analysis revealed no causal effect of GBM on serum TMAO levels using IVW(P＞0.05),and other methods also showed no significant causal relationship(P＞0.05).Sensitivity analysis confirmed the absence of heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy(P＞0.05),and the leave-one-out method demonstrated the stability of the results.Conclusion There is a causal relationship between serum TMAO levels and GBM.
Keywords：gliomaglioblastomatrimethylamine-N-oxidecausalitymendelian randomization
Publication Date：2025-02-20
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：5( 87-91 )