Causal relationship between dietary intake and diabetic retinopathy: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Abstract Aim To examine the association between dietary factors and DR, proliferative DR, background DR Materials and methods We screened 17 dietary datasets from the IEU Open GWAS project (https://gwas.mrcieu.ac.uk/) and obtained the DR, background DR, and proliferative DR datasets related to diabetic retinopathy from the FinnGen biobank(https://r5.finngen.fi/).The inverse variance weighted method (IVW) was utilized as the primary method for Mendelian randomization analysis, and heterogeneity and pleiotropy analyses were incorporated to ensure the robustness of the results. Results The results of the study indicate that the intake of cheese could have a protective effect on background DR（OR：0.411,95%CI：0.203-0.833, P：0.014）. Furthermore, cheese intake was also found to be a protective factor for proliferative DR（OR：0.652，95%CI：0.443 -0.963，P: 0.032）. However, no significant causal association was observed between DR and the other dietary intake factors analyzed in the study. Conclusion Our study has shown that the consumption of cheese is associated with a decreased risk of both background DR and proliferative DR, However, more prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings in the future.