Gut microbiota and spinal stenosis: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Abstract Background Whether the gut microbiota (GM) affects the progress of spinal stenosis is unclear. Accordingly, we explored the link between intestinal microbiota and spinal stenosis by a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) research. Methods The genome-wide association studies (GWAS) data about intestinal microbiota (the MiBioGen) and spinal stenosis (the FinnGen biobank) were obtained. The major analytical strategy was the inverse variance weighting (IVW) approach. To test the credibility of estimates of causality, we conducted a variety of tests, which included consistency, heterogenicity, pleiotropy analyses, and sensitivity analysis. For appraising the underlying reverse causality, we additionally carried out a reverse MR analysis. Results Among the 196 GM taxa, the IVW results confirmed that class-Gammaproteobacteria (P = 0.004), genus-Eubacteriumrectalegroup (P = 0.012), genus-Eubacteriumruminantiumgroup (P = 0.034), genus-Oxalobacter (P = 0.011), genus-Ruminiclostridium5 (P = 0.013) and order-Clostridiales (P = 0.042) were correlated with spinal stenosis based on Finngen GWAS. No pleiotropy or heterogeneity were found. Exposure-outcome effects for the six gut microbial taxa remained significant after instrumental variables with confounding effects were excluded. Conclusion We proved the causative connection between intestinal flora and spinal stenosis and opened up a novel insight into the management of spinal stenosis: aimed modulation of dysbiosis of particular bacterial taxa to protect against spinal stenosis.