Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has been linked to an increased risk of kidney stones in prior observational studies, However, the results are inconsistent, and the causality remains to be established. We aimed to investigate the potential causal relationship between NAFLD and kidney stones using two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR).
Genetic instruments were used as proxies for NAFLD. Summary-level data for the associations of exposure-associated SNPs with kidney stones were obtained from the UK Biobank study (6536 cases and 388,508 controls) and the FinnGen consortium (9713 cases and 366,693 non-cases). MR methods were conducted, including inverse variance weighted method (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, and MR-PRESSO. MR-Egger Regression Intercept and Cochran’s Q test were used to assess the directional pleiotropy and heterogeneity.
cALT-associated NAFLD did not exhibit an association with kidney stones in the Inverse variance weighted (IVW) methods, in both the FinnGen consortium (OR: 1.02, 95%CI: 0.94-1.11, p = 0.632) and the UKBB study (OR: 1.000, 95%CI: 0.998-1.002, p = 0.852). The results were consistent in European ancestry (FinnGen OR: 1.05, 95%CI: 0.98-1.14, p = 0.144, UKBB OR: 1.000, 95%CI: 0.998-1.002, p = 0.859). IVW MR analysis also did not reveal a significant causal relationship between NAFLD and the risk of kidney stone for the other three NAFLD-related traits, including imaging-based, biopsy-confirmed NAFLD, and more stringent biopsy-confirmed NAFLD. The results remained consistent and robust in the sensitivity analysis.
The MR study did not provide sufficient evidence to support the causal associations of NAFLD with kidney stones.