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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Nutritional Immunology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1405790
This article is part of the Research Topic Fatty Acids and Lipid Mediators in Inflammatory Bowel Disease View all articles

Unraveling the causal link: fatty acids and inflammatory bowel disease Author information

Provisionally accepted
  • Zhuzhou Hospital Affiliated to Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Zhuzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Previous observational studies have revealed the strong relationship between fatty acids (FA) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Nonetheless, due to the inherent limitations of retrospective research, the causality between the two has not been clearly established.Methods: Genetic variants associated with the 17 FA indicators were derived from genome-wide association studies. Summary statistics for the discovery cohort and testing cohort for IBD, including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), were available from IIBDGC and FinnGen, respectively. Bidirectional MR analysis and sensitivity analysis with multiple measures were applied to comprehensively investigate the causal link between FA and IBD.Results: Combining the results of various MR methods, the validation of testing cohort, and the merging of meta-analysis, we demonstrated that genetically predicted Omega-3 FA levels, Ratio of Omega-3 FA to total FA, Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) levels, and Ratio of DHA to total FA reduced the risk of IBD, UC, and CD. Meanwhile, multivariate MR suggested that the risk effects of Omega-3 FA and DHA for UC and CD were mainly affected by Saturated FA and Monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA). Furthermore, although there was the causal association between Ratio of MUFA to total FA as well as Ratio of Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) to MUFA and CD, sensitivity analysis prompted that the findings were not robust. None of the above results had a reverse causal effect.This MR investigation provided evidence of causality between diverse FA and IBD. These findings offered new insights into the treatment and prevention of IBD.

    Keywords: Mendelian randomization, Fatty Acids, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, causal association

    Received: 23 Mar 2024; Accepted: 12 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhou and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Zhenhua Zhou, Zhuzhou Hospital Affiliated to Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Zhuzhou, China

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