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Causal relationship between coffee intake and neurological diseases: a Mendelian randomization study

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 78, pages 114–119 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Background

Previous observational studies focused on the association of coffee consumption and neurological disease. However, it is not known whether these associations are causal.

Methods

We used Mendelian randomization (MR) study to assess the causal relationship of coffee intake with the risk of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, stroke, and migraine. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which had genetic statistical significance with coffee intake were used as instrumental variable (IV). Genetic instruments were stretched from the MRC-IEU (MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit) analysis on the UK Biobank. We performed MR analyses using the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method as the main approach. Sensitivity analyses were further performed using MR-Egger and MR-PRESSO to assess the robustness.

Results

In the MR analysis, 40 SNPs were selected as IV, the F statistics for all SNPs ranged from 16 to 359. In IVW approach, our results provide genetic evidence supporting a potential causal association between coffee intake and a lower risk of migraine (OR = 0.528, 95% CI = 0.342–0.817, P = 0.004) and migraine with aura (OR = 0.374, 95% CI = 0.208–0.672, P = 0.001). However, we found no significant association between coffee intake and other neurological diseases along with their subtypes in this MR study.

Conclusion

Using genetic data, our MR study found significant evidence supporting a causal association between coffee intake and migraine. This suggests that coffee consumption is likely a trigger or a prevention strategy for migraine.

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Fig. 1: The overview of the study design.
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Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its additional files.

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Acknowledgements

We extend our sincere thanks to Ben Elsworth for releasing GWAS summary statistics for coffee intake. The AD data was obtained from the IGAP consortium, the PD data from the IPDGC consortium, the ALS data from the AVS consortium, the MS data from the IMSGC consortium, and the epilepsy and its subtypes data from the ILAE consortium. We also thank the MEGASTROKE Consortium for providing summary statistics data for stroke and its subtypes. The data for nontraumatic intracranial hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and migraine were obtained from the FinnGen consortium. We sincerely thank all participants for sharing the genome-wide summary statistics.

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82260225), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (20202BAB216043), and Jiangxi Province Postgraduate Innovation Special Fund Project (YC2022-B061).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pain Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330006, China

    Jinjin Zhang, Gang Xu, Xuezhong Cao, Daying Zhang & Mengye Zhu

  2. Key Laboratory of Neuropathic Pain, Healthcare Commission of Jiangxi Province, Nanchang, 330006, China

    Jinjin Zhang, Gang Xu, Xuezhong Cao, Daying Zhang & Mengye Zhu

  3. School of Basic Medical Sciences, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Yuhan Liu

  4. Department of Pain Medicine, Ji’an City Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Ji’an, 343009, China

    Wenmin Wang

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Contributions

JZ, MZ, and DZ designed the research. JZ, YL, GX, XC, and WW acquired and analyzed data. JZ drafted the manuscript. MZ and DZ made critical revisions of the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Daying Zhang or Mengye Zhu.

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Zhang, J., Liu, Y., Xu, G. et al. Causal relationship between coffee intake and neurological diseases: a Mendelian randomization study. Eur J Clin Nutr 78, 114–119 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-023-01355-y

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