Association Between Circulating Linoleic Acid and Risk of Ischemic Stroke

Observational studies have shown an inverse association between circulating linoleic acid (LA) and risk of ischemic stroke (IS).

The aim of this study was to explore whether genetic variants predicting levels of circulating LA are associated with IS and its subtypes using a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis.

LA-related single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected from a genome-wide association study of 8,631 participants, and summary statistics of IS and IS subtypes were obtained from the MEGASTROKE consortium. MR analysis was performed using the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method complemented with other approaches, including weighted-median, weighted-mode, MR Pleiotropy RESidual Sum and Outlier test and MR-Egger regression, to test for the robustness of the association. Moreover, we conducted bidirectional MR analysis to assess the impact of IS-associated SNPs on circulating LA levels. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated.

We found that genetically predicted circulating LA levels were inversely associated with the risk of IS by the IVW method (OR = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.97-0.99, and P = 0.003). Subgroup analyses showed a statistically significant association between LA and risk of large artery stroke (LAS; OR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.92-0.98, and P = 0.004), but not for other IS subtypes. The results were stable in sensitivity analyses, and no evidence of reverse association between LA and risk of IS, or LAS was observed.

Our study supports a potential inverse association of genetically predicted circulating LA levels with risk of IS, particularly LAS.