title: Adding Mendelian randomization to a meta-analysis-a burgeoning opportunity.
abstract: Current literature is teeming with tens of thousands of meta-analyses, but only a small fraction made seminal contributions to enriching our understanding of the mechanisms of carcinogenesis, possibly due to chance, bias, confounding, or reverse causality. The incorporation of Mendelian randomization (MR) with a meta-analysis has revolutionized traditional practice and is emerging as a viable technique to strengthen causal unconfounded inferences from observational data. We therefore highlight the importance of integrated MR meta-analysis in cancer epidemiology and provide an overview of three existing instrumental selection strategies in medical literature.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, Rui Jin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, No. 197 Ruijin Second Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai, 200025, China. niuwenquan_shcn@163.com.
authors.forename: Wenquan
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Niu
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 1 Beichen West Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, China. guml@big.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Mingliang
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gu
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D057182:Mendelian Randomization Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D064887:Observational Studies as Topic
keywords: Causality; Mendelian randomization; Meta-analysis