Immune cell phenotypes and eating disorders: To find causal relationship through Mendelian randomization study
Abstract
Background: Eating disorders are potentially persistent mental illnesses that can lead to death. Our study is determined to found out the casual relationship between immune cell phenotypes and eating disorders via Mendelian randomization (MR) method. Aim: To explore the causal relationship between 731 immune cell phenotypes and eating disorders. We conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (TSMR) analysis to find out the association between 731 immune cell phenotypes and eating disorders. Materials and methods: All the data we used in this study were obtained from GWAS. We conducted a TSMR analysis. We used 731 types of immune cells as exposure and eating disorders as outcome. Our analysis uses a variety of methods to ensure the robustness of the experiment. The inverse variance weighted (IVW) method was the main MR analysis method, we also proceeded sensitivity analyses to validate the robustness, heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy of the MR results. Results: Our study identified potential causal relationships between various immune cells and eating disorders. We identified 20 types of immune cells that are potentially causally linked to eating disorders linked to eating disorders. There are 7 types of immune cells that act as protective factors for eating disorders. Conclusions: There are 20 types of immune cells have possible relationship with eating disorders via MR method, which can provide more information for clinical practice.
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