The Association Between Facial Ageing and Bone Mineral Density: A Mendelian Randomisation Study

This article aimed to assess the causative association between facial ageing and bone mineral density (BMD) using Mendelian randomisation (MR). In this observational study, single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) linked to facial ageing and four different body regions, including total mineral density (TB-BMD, n = 56,284), femoral neck BMD (FN-BMD, n = 32,735), forearm BMD (FA-BMD, n = 8,143), and lumbar spine BMD (LS-BMD, n = 28,498), were employed as instrumental variables. A two-sample MR analysis was undertaken to scrutinise the causal association between the identified exposure and respective outcomes. The authors found there was no causal relationship between facial ageing and TB-BMD (Beta, -0.1238; 95% CI, -0.3125 to 0.0648; p = 0.1982), FN-BMD (Beta, 0.0720; 95% CI, -0.1728 to 0.3168; p = 0.5643), FA-BMD (Beta, 0.0582; 95% CI, -0.3803 to 0.4966; p = 0.7949), or LS-BMD (Beta, -0.0188; 95% CI, -0.3087 to 0.2711; p = 0.8987). Therefore, the degree of osteoporosis in a person cannot be inferred based on their facial ageing. Key Words: Bone mineral density, Causal relationship, Mendelian randomisation, Facial ageing, Osteoporosis.