1. 586Effects of maternal circulating amino acids on offspring birthweight: a Mendelian randomisation analysis
- Author
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Isobel D. Stewart, Claudia Langenberg, Rachel M. Freathy, Luca A. Lotta, Maik Pietzner, Nicole M. Warrington, Maria Carolina Borges, David M. Evans, Debbie A Lawlor, and Jian Zhao
- Subjects
Pregnancy ,Prenatal nutrition ,Epidemiology ,Offspring ,Birth weight ,Physiology ,Mendelian Randomization Analysis ,Single-nucleotide polymorphism ,General Medicine ,Biology ,medicine.disease ,symbols.namesake ,Pleiotropism ,Mendelian inheritance ,symbols ,medicine - Abstract
Background It is suggested amino acids are critical for fetal growth, but analyses assessing causality are lacking. Mendelian randomisation (MR) can be used to examine causal effects under instrumental variable (IV) assumptions. Methods We conducted a two-sample MR study utilizing summary data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of amino acids (sample 1, n = 86,507) and of offspring birthweight (sample 2, combined UK Biobank and Early Growth Genetics Consortium, n = 406,063). Seventy-five independent single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) robustly associated with 18 amino acids (p Results There was evidence of positive causal effects of maternal alanine (51.9 g birthweight increase per SD increase in amino acid level, 95% CI: 24.2, 79.5), glutamine (51.3 g, 95% CI: 33.5, 69.0), glycine (10.4 g, 95% CI: 1.3, 19.6) and serine (27.1 g, 95% CI: 11.2, 43.0) on birthweight and inverse causal effects of maternal isoleucine (-109.7 g, 95% CI: -194.6, -24.9) and histidine (-41.1 g, 95% CI: -78.5, -3.7) on birthweight. Sensitivity analyses to explore reverse causality and bias due to horizontal pleiotropy supported our findings. Conclusions Some maternal circulating amino acids have causal effects on birthweight. Key messages MR can be extended to probe effects of maternal nutrition on offspring development.
- Published
- 2021