Background:
Based on research evidence, bone mineral density(BMD) is closely related to the occurrence of osteoporosis and fractures, and tea intake in daily diet has an important impact on bone density changes. However, the inherent relationship between them is not clear. We adopted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) method to evaluate the causal effect of tea intake on bone density and further explore whether it has specificity in different age groups.
Methods:
Analyzed meta-data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on tea consumption. Used single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) closely associated with tea consumption as instrumental variables (IVs) for a two-sample Mendelian randomization, the MR-Egger, IVW, Weighted median, Weighted mode methods were used to assess the causal analysis of tea intake between BMD at different ages.
Result:
Including 31 single nucleotide polymorphisms as instrumental variables. According to the results of inverse variance weighting (IVW), we found that tea intake had a positive causal effect on systemic BMD, but different age groups (0-15 years; 15-30 years; 30-45 years; 45-60 years; over 60 years) showed positive causality only in the 45-60 age range, with no significant statistical effect in other age groups. Evidence suggests that there is no genetic pleiotropic effect of tea intake on the causal effect of systemic BMD or between the five age groups (P> 0.05). In the IVW method, Cochran Q statistic and MR-Egger regression were used to calculate heterogeneity, and P > 0.05 indicates the absence of significant heterogeneity.
Conclusion:
The results of MR analysis showed that tea intake had a positive causal relationship on total body BMD, while in different age groups, tea intake only positively affected BMD in the 45–60 age group. This means that tea is beneficial for maintaining or increasing BMD in this age group, and may reduce the risk of osteoporosis and fracture.