Cheese Intake and Infectious Diseases Risk: A Two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Some beneficial effects of cheese intake on disease have been reported in several observational studies, However, there is still a gap in the study of infectious diseases. We aimed to apply the two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) approach to assess the causal relationship between cheese intake and infectious diseases. Methods We used a two-sample Mendelian randomization approach to analyze relevant data from publicly available genome-wide association studies to infer causality. The random-effects inverse-variance-weighted method was used to calculate effect estimates. Results Genetically predicted cheese intake was associated with a lower risk of sepsis (OR = 0.63; 95% CI, 0.48–0.83; p = 0.003), pneumonia (OR = 0.67; 95% CI,0.55–0.82; p = 6.76 x10− 5), UTI(OR = 0.73; 95% CI, 0.61–0.89; p = 0.002), cellulitis ( OR = 0.70; 95%CI,0.51–0.91;p = 0.008) and erysipelas (OR = 0.62; 95% CI,0.46–0.83;p = 0.001). However, our results have no evidence to support the causal effects between cheese intake and URTI (OR = 0.81; 95% CI,0.47–1.39; p = 0.439). Multiple testing and sensitivity analyses demonstrate the reliability of our results. Conclusion In our MR study, we confirmed a causal relationship between cheese intake and infectious diseases. Although no evidence supports the causality of cheese intake in URTI, we also could show that an increased intake of cheese may be good for us to prevent infectious diseases.