RESUMO
This study aimed to examine whether dried fruit intake is causally associated with Osteoarthritis (OA). A two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW), weighted median (WM), and MR-Egger regression methods was performed. We used the publicly available summary statistics data sets of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) meta-analyses for dried fruit intake in individuals included in the UK Biobank (nâ =â 421,764; MRC-IEU consortium) as the exposure and a GWAS publicly available in PubMed for OA (total nâ =â 484,598; caseâ =â 39,515, controlâ =â 445,083) as the outcome. We selected 41 single nucleotide polymorphisms at genome-wide significance from GWASs on dried fruit intake as the instrumental variables. The IVW method showed evidence to support a causal association between dried fruit intake and OA (betaâ =â -0.020, SEâ =â 0.009, Pâ =â .039). MR-Egger regression indicated no directional pleiotropy (interceptâ =â 1E-05; Pâ =â .984), but it showed no causal association between dried fruit intake and OA (betaâ =â -0.020, SEâ =â 0.043, Pâ =â .610). However, the WM approach yielded evidence of a causal association between dried fruit intake and OA (betaâ =â -0.026, SEâ =â 0.012, Pâ =â .026). Cochran's Q test showed the existence of heterogeneity, but the statistics of I2 showed low heterogeneity. The results of MR analysis support that dried fruit intake may be causally associated with a decreased risk of OA.