Causal associations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D with functional gastrointestinal disorders: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

BACKGROUND: Previous observational studies have shown associations between vitamin Ds and FGIDS[Including irritable bowel syndrome(IBS) and functional dyspepsia(FD)]. However, the association is controversial and the causality remains unknown. In this study, two-sample MR was cited to explore the causal effect on FGIDS caused by vitamin D level and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D. METHOD: The GWASs of vitaminD and 25-hydroxyvitamin D, with 57–99 strongly related SNPs were all obtained from UK biobank. The GWASs of IBS and FD were obtained from FinnGen biobank with respectively 187,028 and 194,071 participants involved. Fixed-effect inverse variance weighted regression was used to evaluate causal estimates. Other statistical methods such as MR Egger, weighted median estimation, maximum likelihood estimation and penalty-weighted median estimation are also used to verify the accuracy of the main results. RESULTS: Measuring by the IVW method, our research indicated that no causal relationship was detected between vitamin D intake and Functional gastrointestinal disorders [IVW, OR(vitamin D-IBS) = 0.909, 95% CI 0.789–1.053, p = 0.2017); OR(vitamin D-FD) = 1.0662, 95% CI 0.9182–1.2380, p = 0.4000]. As for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, no causal relationship was detected on FD(IVW, OR(25-hydroxyvitamin D-FD) = 0.9635, 95% CI 0.8039–1.1546, p = 0.6869). Nevertheless, a negative causal relationship was revealed between 25-hydroxyvitamin D and IBS(IVW, OR(25-hydroxyvitamin D-IBS) = 0.832, 95% CI 0.696–0.995, p = 0.0436). Sensitive analysis supported the main findings but did not suggest bias due to pleiotropy. CONCLUSIONS: Our Mendelian randomization analyses suggest a negative causal relationship between 25-hydroxyvitamin D and IBS. For each additional SD increase of genetically determined 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, the risk of IBS decreased by 16.8%. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12263-023-00734-1.