1. The Causal Relationships Between Gut Microbiota, Brain Volume, and Intelligence: A Two-Step Mendelian Randomization Analysis.
- Author
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Yao, Shi, Han, Ji-Zhou, Guo, Jing, Wang, Xin, Qian, Long, Wu, Hao, Shi, Wei, Zhu, Ren-Jie, Wang, Jia-Hao, Dong, Shan-Shan, Cui, Li-Li, Wang, Yan, Guo, Yan, and Yang, Tie-Lin
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GENOME-wide association studies , *GUT microbiome , *GENETIC variation , *COGNITIVE ability , *COGNITION disorders - Abstract
Growing evidence indicates that dynamic changes in gut microbiome can affect intelligence; however, whether these relationships are causal remains elusive. We aimed to disentangle the poorly understood causal relationship between gut microbiota and intelligence. We performed a 2-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using genetic variants from the largest available genome-wide association studies of gut microbiota (N = 18,340) and intelligence (N = 269,867). The inverse-variance weighted method was used to conduct the MR analyses complemented by a range of sensitivity analyses to validate the robustness of the results. Considering the close relationship between brain volume and intelligence, we applied 2-step MR to evaluate whether the identified effect was mediated by regulating brain volume (N = 47,316). We found a risk effect of the genus Oxalobacter on intelligence (odds ratio = 0.968 change in intelligence per standard deviation increase in taxa; 95% CI, 0.952–0.985; p = 1.88 × 10−4) and a protective effect of the genus Fusicatenibacter on intelligence (odds ratio = 1.053; 95% CI, 1.024–1.082; p = 3.03 × 10−4). The 2-step MR analysis further showed that the effect of genus Fusicatenibacter on intelligence was partially mediated by regulating brain volume, with a mediated proportion of 33.6% (95% CI, 6.8%–60.4%; p =.014). Our results provide causal evidence indicating the role of the microbiome in intelligence. Our findings may help reshape our understanding of the microbiota-gut-brain axis and development of novel intervention approaches for preventing cognitive impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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