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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1415343
This article is part of the Research Topic Cognitive Impairment and Physical Function in Older Adults View all 32 articles

Educational attainment, brain cortical structure, and sarcopenia: a Mendelian randomization study

Provisionally accepted
Yunqing Zhang Yunqing Zhang 1Ruideng Wang Ruideng Wang 2Zhengyang Chen Zhengyang Chen 2Fang Zhou Fang Zhou 2Shilong Su Shilong Su 2*
  • 1 The First Hospital of Changsha, Changsha, Hunan Province, China
  • 2 Peking University Third Hospital, Haidian, China

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

    Background: Previous observational studies have suggested associations between high-level educational attainment (EA) and a lower risk of sarcopenia. However, the causality inferred from those studies was subjected to residual confounding and reverse causation. The protective effect of EA on sarcopenia may be mediated via changes in brain cortical structure. The aim of this study was to use a two-step Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to illustrate the causal relationship between EA, brain cortical structure, and sarcopenia.Methods: Instrumental variables at the genome-wide significance level were obtained from publicly available datasets, and inverse variance weighted as the primary method was used for MR analysis. We perform several sensitivity analyses, including Cochran Q test, MR-Egger intercept test, leave-one-out analyses, and MR Pleiotropy Residual Sum and Outlier to evaluate the reliability of the results.Results: EA was causally associated with increased appendicular lean mass (β=0.25, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.19 to 0.31, P=2.25×10 -15 ), hand grip strength (left: β=0.042, 95% CI: 0.013 to 0.071, P=4.77×10 -3 and right: β=0.050, 95% CI: 0.022 to 0.079, P=5.17×10 -4 ), and usual walking pace (β=0.20, 95% CI: 0.18 to 0.22, P=6.16×10 -83 ). In addition, EA was associated with increased brain cortical surface area (β=4082.36, 95% CI: 2513.35 to 5681.38, P=3.40×10 -7 ) and cortical thickness (TH) (β=0.014, 95% CI: 0.0045 to 0.023, P=3.45×10 -3 ). Regarding the causal effect of EA on usual walking pace, the mediatory effect of TH was 0.0069 and the proportion of mediation by TH was 3.43%.The study will have revealed the protective causal effect of EA on sarcopenia, which provides a reference for the prevention of sarcopenia at the public health level. We also will have found EA could affect the brain cortical structure, and the brain cortical structure could mediate the protective effect of EA against sarcopenia risk.

    Keywords: Educational attainment, Brain cortical structure, Sarcopenia, Mendelian randomization, Causal effect

    Received: 10 Apr 2024; Accepted: 11 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhang, Wang, Chen, Zhou and Su. 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: Shilong Su, Peking University Third Hospital, Haidian, China

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