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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 4|pp 3340—3353

Sarcopenia-related traits and coronary artery disease: a bi-directional Mendelian randomization study

Hui-Min Liu1, Qiang Zhang2, Wen-Di Shen1, Bo-Yang Li1, Wan-Qiang Lv1, Hong-Mei Xiao1, Hong-Wen Deng1,3
  • 1Center for System Biology, Data Sciences, and Reproductive Health, School of Basic Medical Science, Central South University, Yuelu, Changsha, P.R. China
  • 2College of Public Health, Zhengzhou University, High-Tech Development Zone of States, Zhengzhou, P.R. China
  • 3Tulane Center of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA
Received: September 26, 2019Accepted: January 27, 2020Published: February 16, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102815

Copyright © 2020 Liu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Previous Mendelian randomization (MR) studies have yielded a conflicting causal relationship between sarcopenia and coronary artery disease (CAD), and lack the association of CAD with sarcopenia. We performed a bi-directional MR approach to clarify the causality and causal direction between sarcopenia-related traits and CAD. In stage 1 analysis, estimates of inverse variance weighting (IVW) and several sensitivity analyses were obtained by applying genetic variants that predict sarcopenia-related traits to CAD. Conversely, we also applied genetic variants that predict CAD to sarcopenia-related traits in stage 2 analyses. IVW analysis showed that higher handgrip strength reduces risk for CAD: A 1-kilogram (kg) increase in genetically determined left handgrip strength reduced odds of CAD by 36% [odds ratio (OR) = 0.64, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.498 - 0.821, p = 4.56E-04], and right handgrip strength reduced odds of CAD by 41.1% (OR = 0.599, 95% CI 0.476 - 0.753, p = 1.10E-05). However, genetically predicted CAD did not show any causal association with handgrip strength, and no significant causal relationship was detected between genetically instrumented body lean mass and CAD. Our results suggest that decreased muscle strength but not decreased muscle mass leads to the increased risk of CAD in sarcopenia.