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Updated: Jul 9, 2025
A Methodological Approach to Non-invasive Assessments of Vascular Function and Morphology
Published on: February 7, 2015
The association between grip strength and carotid intima media thickness: A Mendelian randomization analysis of the
Christian W Mendo1, Pierrette Gaudreau2, Geneviève Lefebvre3
1Centre de Recherche du Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, Canada; École de Santé Publique de l'Université de Montréal, Canada.
Background:
Several two-sample Mendelian randomization studies have reported discordant results concerning the association between grip strength and cardiovascular disease, possibly due to the number of instrumental variables used, pleiotropic bias, and/ or effect modification by age and sex.
Methods:
We conducted a sex- and age-stratified one-sample Mendelian randomization study in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. We investigated whether grip strength is associated with carotid intima media thickness (cIMT), a marker of vascular atherosclerosis event risk, using eighteen single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) identified as specifically associated with grip strength.
Results:
A total of 20,258 participants of self-reported European ancestry were included in the analytic sample. Our Mendelian randomization findings suggest a statistically significant association between grip strength and cIMT (MR coefficient of 0.02 (95% CI: 0.01, 0.04)). We found no statistically significant differences between sexes (p-value = 0.201), or age groups [(≤ 60 years old versus >60 years old); p-value = 0.421].
Conclusion:
This study provides evidence that grip strength is inversely associated with cIMT. Our one-sample MR study design allowed us to demonstrate that there is no evidence of heterogeneity of effects according to age group or biological sex.
