Causal associations between changes in lipid profiles and risk of gallstone disease: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

BACKGROUND: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has been linked to gallstone disease (GSD) in observational studies; however, the relationships between certain lipid profiles and GSD remain unclear. METHODS: We adopted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) framework by applying different statistical methods to assess causalities between lipid profiles and GSD. We identified single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for blood lipids and NAFLD from separate previous genome-wide association studies (GWASs). RESULTS: We retrieved GSD SNPs attributed to 10,520 cases and 361,194 controls and validated our estimates using GWAS summary data from UK Biobank. We also performed sex-stratified analyses. Based on the summary estimates of 41, 59, 35, and 2 SNPs for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLC), triglycerides (TGs), and NAFLD, respectively, we found no evidence of a causal relationship between genetically-predicted lipid profiles and GSD. The odds ratios were 0.995 for LDLC [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.994–0.998] per 0.98 mmol/L, 0.999 for HDLC (95% CI: 0.996–1.003) per 0.41 mmol/L, 0.997 for TGs (95% CI: 0.994–1.001) per 1 mmol/L, and 0.993 for NAFLD (95% CI: 0.984–1.003). No evidence of associations between lipid profile s and GSD in validation MR analyses or the sex-stratification analyses was noted. CONCLUSIONS: Genetically predicted hyperlipidemia or NAFLD is not causally associated with GSD.