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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gynecological Oncology
Volume 14 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1436955

The effect of lipidomes on the risk of endometrioid endometrial cancer: a Mendelian randomization study

Provisionally accepted
  • Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: This study aimed to explore the potential effects between various human plasma lipidomes and endometrioid endometrial cancer (EEC) by using Mendelian randomization (MR) methods. Methods: This study designated a total of 179 human plasma lipidomes from the genome-wide association study (GWAS) database as the exposure variable. An EEC-related dataset from the GWAS (GCST006465) served as the outcome variable. MR analyses used the inverse variance-weighted method (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, simple mode, and weighted mode methods for regression calculations, accounting for possible biases induced by linkage disequilibrium and weak instrument variables. Any lipidomes failing to pass heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy tests were deemed to lack significant causal impact on the outcome. Results: The results of IVW analysis disclosed that a variety of human plasma lipidomes (n = 15) exhibited a significant causal effect on EEC (pā€‰<ā€‰0.05). A subset of these lipidomes (n = 13) passed heterogeneity and horizontal pleiotropy tests, which demonstrated consistent and viable causal effects (pā€‰<ā€‰0.05) including glycerophospholipids, glycerolipids, and sterols. Specifically, phosphatidylcholine (odds ratio [OR]: 1.065-1.129, p < 0.05) exhibited a significant positive causal effect on the occurrence of EEC. Conversely, sterol ester (OR = 0.936, p = 0.007), diacylglycerol (OR = 0.914, p = 0.036), phosphatidylcholine (OR: 0.903-0.927, p < 0.05), phosphatidylethanolamine (OR = 0.907, p = 0.046) and triacylglycerol (OR: 0.880-0.924, p < 0.05) showed a notable negative causal association with EEC, suggesting their inhibitory effects on the EEC occurrence. Conclusions: The study revealed that human plasma lipidomes have complex impacts on EEC through Mendelian randomization. This indicated that the diversity of structural changes in lipidomes could show different effects on subtypes and then affect EEC occurrence. Although these lipids had the potential to be promising biomarkers, they needed to be further clinically validated nevertheless.

    Keywords: Mendelian randomization, Endometrioid endometrial cancer, Lipidome, GWAS, Finnish cohort

    Received: 22 May 2024; Accepted: 01 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: Ā© 2024 Lou, Jiang and Guan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Feng Jiang, Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.