Causal effects of dietary habits on COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalisation, and severity: A comprehensive Mendelian randomisation study

This study aimed to investigate the causal effect of diet habits on COVID-19 susceptibility, hospitalisation, and severity. We used data from a large-scale diet dataset and the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative to estimate causal relationships using Mendelian randomisation. The inverse-variance weighted method (IVW) was used as the main analysis. For COVID-19 susceptibility, IVW estimates indicated that milk (OR: 0.82; 95% CI: 0.68-0.98; P = 0.032), unsalted peanut (OR: 0.53; 95% CI: 0.35-0.82; P = 0.004), beef (OR: 0.59; 95% CI: 0.41-0.84; P = 0.004), pork (OR: 0.63; 95% CI: 0.42-0.93; P = 0.022), and processed meat (OR: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.63-0.92; P = 0.005) were causally associated with reduced COVID-19 susceptibility, while coffee (OR: 1.23; 95% CI: 1.04-1.45; P = 0.017) and tea (OR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.05-1.31; P = 0.006) were causally associated with increased risk. For COVID-19 hospitalisation, beef (OR: 0.51; 95% CI: 0.26-0.98; P = 0.042) showed negative correlations, while tea (OR: 1.54; 95% CI: 1.16-2.04; P = 0.003), dried fruit (OR: 2.08; 95% CI: 1.37-3.15; P = 0.001), and red wine (OR: 2.35; 95% CI: 1.29-4.27; P = 0.005) showed positive correlations. For COVID-19 severity, coffee (OR: 2.16; 95% CI: 1.25-3.76; P = 0.006), dried fruit (OR: 1.98; 95% CI: 1.16-3.37; P = 0.012), and red wine (OR: 2.84; 95% CI: 1.21-6.68; P = 0.017) showed an increased risk. These findings were confirmed to be robust through sensitivity analyses. Our findings established a causal relationship ...
Source: The British Journal of Nutrition - Category: Nutrition Authors: Source Type: research