title: Mendelian randomization in nutritional epidemiology.
abstract: Nutritional epidemiology aims to identify dietary and lifestyle causes for human diseases. Causality inference in nutritional epidemiology is largely based on evidence from studies of observational design, and may be distorted by unmeasured or residual confounding and reverse causation. Mendelian randomization is a recently developed methodology that combines genetic and classical epidemiological analysis to infer causality for environmental exposures, based on the principle of Mendel's law of independent assortment. Mendelian randomization uses genetic variants as proxies for environmental exposures of interest. Associations derived from Mendelian randomization analysis are less likely to be affected by confounding and reverse causation. During the past 5 years, a body of studies examined the causal effects of diet/lifestyle factors and biomarkers on a variety of diseases. The Mendelian randomization approach also holds considerable promise in the study of intrauterine influences on offspring health outcomes. However, the application of Mendelian randomization in nutritional epidemiology has some limitations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. nhlqi@channing.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qi
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000235:genetics; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D002097:C-Reactive Protein / Q000032:analysis; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D004032:Diet; D004813:Epidemiology; D005260:Female; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics*; D040941:Heredity / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D002097:C-Reactive Protein
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