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Circulating Galectin-3 Levels Are Not Associated With Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Mendelian Randomization
Maxime Tremblay1,2, Nicolas Perrot1,2, Nooshin Ghodsian1
1Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec, Québec, Canada.
Context:
The impact of galectin-3 inhibitors on nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases (NAFLD)-related outcomes is currently under investigation in randomized clinical trials. Whether there is a causal association between plasma galectin-3 levels and NAFLD is unknown.
Objective:
To evaluate the causal effect of circulating galectin-3 levels on NAFLD as well as >800 other human diseases.
Design:
Inverse variance-weighted (IVW) Mendelian randomization (MR) and phenome-wide MR.
Setting:
Summary statistics of genome-wide association studies.
Patients:
Participants of the UK Biobank, Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE), FinnGen, Prevention of Renal and Vascular End-Stage Disease (PREVEND), and IMPROVE cohorts.
Intervention:
Identification of independent single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with galectin-3 levels (P < 5 × 10-8) in the PREVEND (14 SNPs) and IMPROVE (3 SNPs) cohorts.
Main Outcome Measures:
Presence of NAFLD in a meta-analysis of genome-wide association study of the eMERGE, UK Biobank, and FinnGen cohorts (3042 NAFLD cases and 504 853 controls), as well as >800 other human diseases in the UK Biobank and FinnGen.
Results:
Using IVW-MR, we found no causal association between galectin-3 levels and NAFLD in the meta-analysis of the 3 cohorts or in each individual cohort. After correction for multiple testing, we found no causal association between galectin-3 levels and >800 human disease-related traits.
Conclusions:
This MR study revealed no causal associations between circulating galectin-3 levels and NAFLD or any other disease traits, suggesting that plasma galectin-3 levels may not be directly implicated in the pathogenesis of NAFLD or other human diseases.
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