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Genomics and personalized strategies in nutrition

Serum uric acid is not associated with major depressive disorder in European and South American populations: a meta-analysis and two-sample bidirectional Mendelian Randomization study

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 76, pages 1665–1674 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Objective

Although previous epidemiological studies have demonstrated that serum uric acid (SUA) is associated with major depressive disorder (MDD), these analyses are prone to biases. Here, we applied the Mendelian Randomization approach to determine whether SUA is causally associated with MDD.

Methods

We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the relationship between SUA and MDD, then applied summary data from the Global Urate Genetics Consortium and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium to estimate their causal effect using a two-sample bidirectional Mendelian Randomization (MR) analysis. Thereafter, the causal effect was further researched using genetic risk scores (GRS) as instrumental variables (IVs).

Results

Results of a meta-analysis of articles comprising 6975 and 13,589 MDD patients and controls, respectively, revealed that SUA was associated with MDD (SMD = −0.690, 95% CI: −0.930 to −0.440, I2 = 97.4%, P < 0.001). In addition, the five MR methods revealed no causal relationship existed between SUA and MDD, which corroborated the results obtained via the GRS approach.

Conclusion

This paper found little evidence that this association between SUA and MDD is casual. Genetically, there was no significant causal association between SUA and MDD.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2: Two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis of the association between SUA and MDD.

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Data availability

All datasets used in this study are publicly available, included in the main manuscript or its supplementary information files.

Code availability

The codes used for all analyses are available on request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the Global Urate Genetics Consortium (GUGC) and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) for supplying the summary data. This study was funded by the Major Project of Guangxi Innovation Driven (AA18118016), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC0908000), Scientific Research and Technology Development Program of Guangxi (15277004).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Zefeng Chen, Shuang Liang, Yulan Bai.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scientific Research Department, The People’s Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guangxi Academy of Medical Sciences, 6 Taoyuan Road, Nanning, 530021, China

    Zefeng Chen & ShiShan Huang

  2. Center for Genomic and Personalized Medicine, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, China

    Shuang Liang, Yulan Bai, Jiali Lin, Mingli Li & Zengnan Mo

  3. Guangxi key Laboratory for Genomic and Personalized Medicine, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, China

    Shuang Liang, Yulan Bai, Jiali Lin, Mingli Li & Zengnan Mo

  4. School of Public Health, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, China

    Shuang Liang, Yulan Bai, Jiali Lin, Mingli Li, Zengnan Mo & Jianxiong Long

  5. Institute of Urology and Nephrology, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, China

    Zengnan Mo

  6. Department of Radiology, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, China

    Sisi Xie

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Contributions

ZC and SL designed research; YB and JL conducted research; JL and ZM analyzed data, and ML, SX and SSH wrote the paper. ZC had primary responsibility for the final content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zefeng Chen or Jianxiong Long.

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Chen, Z., Liang, S., Bai, Y. et al. Serum uric acid is not associated with major depressive disorder in European and South American populations: a meta-analysis and two-sample bidirectional Mendelian Randomization study. Eur J Clin Nutr 76, 1665–1674 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-022-01165-8

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