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Causal Effects of Dietary Macronutrients and Micronutrients on Myopia and Other Major Ocular Disorders: A Mendelian
Zhaoxia Xu1, Min Li2
1School of Stomatology and Optometry, Hubei University of Science and Technology; 274278961@hbust.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Myopia and other major ocular disorders, such as cataracts, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), pose growing public health concerns worldwide. While nutrition is believed to influence ocular development and degeneration, causal evidence remains limited. A two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was performed using large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary data to evaluate the causal effects of dietary macronutrient and micronutrient intake on the risk of myopia and other ocular diseases. The inverse variance-weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary analysis, supported by weighted median, MR-Egger, and MR-PRESSO for sensitivity testing. To account for multiple comparisons, false discovery rate (FDR) correction was applied. After FDR adjustment, higher genetically predicted vitamin C levels remained significantly associated with an increased risk of AMD (odds ratio [OR] = 1.324, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.133-1.546). Several additional associations were observed at nominal significance levels (P < 0.05), including higher relative dietary fat intake with increased myopia risk (OR = 1.033, 95% CI: 1.003-1.063), sugar intake with reduced cataract risk (OR = 0.746, 95% CI: 0.561-0.993), iron with lower myopia risk (OR = 0.995, 95% CI: 0.991-0.999), vitamin D with increased cataract risk (OR = 1.256, 95% CI: 1.062-1.487), folic acid with reduced cataract risk (OR = 0.843, 95% CI: 0.724-0.981), and phosphorus with reduced glaucoma risk (OR = 0.727, 95% CI: 0.554-0.953). No evidence of horizontal pleiotropy or heterogeneity was observed. These findings suggest a potential causal role of certain nutrients in ocular disease risk, although most associations did not remain significant after multiple testing correction and should therefore be interpreted with caution. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings and explore underlying biological mechanisms.
