Analysis of the effect of dietary factors on irritable bowel syndrome by Mendelian randomized method

Objective To explore the causal relationship between dietary factors and the risk of developing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) through Mendelian randomization analysis.Methods In the study, dietary factor-related characteristics from published Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) were selected and extracted as instrumental variables, and GWAS data on IBS were obtained from FinnGen Database. A two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis was primarily performed using the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method, and the test of heterogeneity, the test of pleiotropy, and sensitivity analyses were performed to guarantee the stability and reliability of the results.Results The results of IVW method showed that an increase in the average weekly beer and cider intake might significantly increase the risk of developing IBS [OR=2.043, 95%CI (1.126, 3.708), P=0.019]. Conversely, an increase in coffee consumption [OR=0.671, 95%CI (0.473, 0.952), P=0.025] and dried fruits intake [OR=0.452, 95%CI (0.293, 0.697), P