Wuhan, China — On Dec 4, 2018, Hepatology published original article named “Gallstone disease and type 2 diabetes risk: A Mendelian randomization study” (Hepatology, 2018 Dec 4. doi: 10.1002/hep.30403) which investigated the causal association of gallstone disease (GSD) with diabetes risk by Mendelian randomization analysis. This study is the first one to explore the causal association of gallstone and diabetes risk with Mendelian randomization analysis.

GSD was reported to be positively associated with diabetes risk. Whether the association is causal remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the potential causal association between GSD and type 2 diabetes risk using a Mendelian randomization analysis.

Observational study was conducted among 16,299 participants who were free of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes at baseline in the Dongfeng-Tongji cohort study. GSD was diagnosed by experienced physicians by abdominal B-type ultrasound inspection and type 2 diabetes was defined according to the criteria of the American Diabetes Association. Cox proportional hazard regression model was used to examine the association of GSD with type 2 diabetes risk. A genetic risk score (GRS) for GSD was constructed with 8 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which were derived from the previous genome-wide association studies. The causal associations of the score for GSD with type2 diabetes were tested among 7,000 participants in Mendelian randomization analysis. In this study the results indicated that GSD could increase 22% of diabetes risk. However, the results failed to provide evidence to support the causal associations of GSD with diabetes risk.

Therefore, the present study supported a positive but not a causal association of GSD with type 2 diabetes risk. More studies are needed to verify our findings in the future.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (NSFC‐81522040, 81473051, and 81230069); National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC0907501); the Program for HUST Academic Frontier Youth Team; the Program for Changjiang Scholars; Innovative Research Team at the University of Ministry of Education of China (IRT1246); and China Medical Board (12‐113).

Chinese News Link: http://gwxy.tjmu.edu.cn/info/1067/2584.htm

For more details of the paper, please visit: https://doi.org/10.1002/hep.30403