Association Between Dietary Taste Preferences and Primary Ovarian Insufficiency: A Mendelian Randomization Study

To investigate the effects of dietary taste preferences on primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) by two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis, excluding confounding factors.

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with 139 dietary taste preferences were obtained from GWAS results provided by May-Wilson S et al. Data for POI were obtained from the FinnGen Biobank. The relationship between dietary taste preferences and POIs was explored using IVW as the primary method. The MR-Egger intercept term test and Cochran's Q test examined sensitivity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity. The analyses were visualized by plotting scatterplots, funnel plots, and leave-one-out plots.

IVW analysis showed that preference for sweet food (p=0.034), preference for cake (p=0.040), preference for white wine (p=0.048) was positively associated with the risk of developing POI, preference for bitter food (p=0.048), preference for Mackerel (p=0.031), preference for Gherkins (p=0.024), preference for Cream (p= 0.009) and preference for Soya milk (p=0.042) were negatively associated with the risk of developing POI, while there was no significant association between preference for salty food (p=0.350) and preference for spicy food (p=0.827) and POI.

This study suggests that food preference is a heritable trait, that food preference is the primary reason people choose their food intake, and that alterations in taste-related receptor genes may affect ovarian function. These findings could help guide improved dietary guidelines and thus control the progression of POI.