Author(s)

Tianxiang Gao ¹, Hanchen Liu ², Congyan Wu ², Xiaoxi Zhang ², Jianmin Liu ²

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Health Science and Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China
² Neurovascular Center, Naval Medical University Changhai Hospital, Shanghai, China

Corresponding Author

Tianxiang Gao

ABSTRACT

The background applied in this paper is that considerable evidence has been reported that alterations in gut microbiota composition could cause cerebrovascular diseases. The microbiota-gut-brain axis also hinted at a possible contribution of the gut microbiota to cerebrovascular diseases. However, the causal association between the gut microbiome and the risk of brain microbleeds (BMB) is unclear. The methods applied in this paper is that we performed two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) utilizing the summary-level data of respective genome-wide association study (GWAS) for 211 gut microbial taxa and two BMB phenotypes to reveal the causal association between gut microbiota and BMB.  The results applied in this paper is that we identified 7 causal relationships between genetic liability in the gut microbiome and any BMB, including those involving the genus Lachnospiraceae. We found 13 associations between genetic liability in the gut microbiome and lobar BMB. Moreover, we found 6 associations between genetic liability in the gut microbiome and deep infratentorial BMB. The bidirectional, heterogeneity, and pleiotropy analyses confirmed the robustness of MR results. The conclusion applied in this paper is that our MR analysis revealed that the gut microbiota was causally associated with BMB and may be helpful in providing new insights for further mechanistic and clinical studies of microbiota-mediated cerebrovascular diseases.

KEYWORDS

Gut microbiota, brain microbleeds, Mendelian randomization, Genetics, SNPs

CITE THIS PAPER

Tianxiang Gao, Hanchen Liu, Congyan Wu, Xiaoxi Zhang, Jianmin Liu, Causal Relationship between Gut Microbiota and Brain Microbleeds: A Comprehensive Mendelian Randomization Study. MEDS Basic Medicine (2024) Vol. 2: 30-38. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/medbm.2024.020105.

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