The causal relationship between smoking, alcohol consumption, and sepsis: A 2-sample mendelian randomized study

A Mendelian randomization (MR) study was used to explore whether there is a causal relationship between smoking, alcohol consumption, and sepsis. Genome-wide association studies data on sepsis, alcohol consumption, and 3 smoking behaviors including smoking initiation, age of initiation, and cigarettes per day were extracted from public databases. The inverse variance weighting (IVW), weighted median, and MR-Egger regression method were used to analyze the causal association between smoking, alcohol consumption, and sepsis. Forest plots of the causal relationship between smoking, alcohol consumption, and sepsis were plotted. The MR Analysis based mainly on IVW showed a causal relationship between cigarettes per day and sepsis (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.11-1.37, P = .000). Heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy were excluded by sensitivity analysis. MR Analysis showed that there was no causal association between sepsis and smoking initiation, age of initiation, and alcohol consumption. There is a positive causal effect between cigarettes per day and the risk of sepsis. However, there was insufficient evidence for a causal relationship between sepsis and smoking initiation, age of initiation, and alcohol consumption.