Beef intake and risk of rheumatoid arthritis: Insights from a cross-sectional study and two-sample Mendelian randomization

Abstract

BackgroundBeef is common in daily diet, but its association with the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) remains uncertain. The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between beef intake and the risk of RA.Materials and methodsWe investigated the association between beef intake and risk of RA by multivariate logistic regression, based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999–2016 involving 9,618 participants. The dose–response relationship between beef intake and RA was explored as well. Furthermore, we performed Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to examine the causal effect of beef intake on RA. Genetic instruments for beef intake were selected from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) including 335,576 individuals from the UK Biobank study, and summary statistics relating to RA were obtained from a GWAS meta-analysis of 14,361 RA patients and 43,923 controls. The inverse-variance weighted (IVW) approach was used to estimate the causal association, and MR-Egger regression and Mendelian randomization pleiotropy residual sum and outlier (MR-PRESSO) test were applied to evaluate the pleiotropy and outliers.ResultsCompared with the lowest quintile (0 to ≤33.50 g/d), beef intake was found to be significantly associated with the risk of RA [odds ratio (OR): 1.94; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.20–3.12] in the third quintile (50.26 to ≤76.50 g/d). Moreover, a reversed “U” dose–response relationship between beef and RA (Pnon–linearity = 0.023) was found. In the MR analysis, beef intake was associated with an increased risk of RA (OR: 3.05; 95% CI: 1.11–8.35; P = 0.030) by the IVW method. The results from MR-Egger regression and MR-PRESSO test showed that there were no pleiotropic variations and outliers.ConclusionThis study indicated that there is suggestive evidence to support the causal effect of beef intake on the risk of RA, while further studies are warranted to elucidate the exact association.

Diet affects inflammatory arthritis: a Mendelian randomization study of 30 dietary patterns causally associated with inflammatory arthritis

“…Meat intake, especially red meat, increases the risk of IA ( 17 ). The present study also found that beef intake increases the risk of RA, which has been confirmed in previous MR studies ( 50 ). It is puzzling that in a study of the causality of dietary factors in ReA, we found that intake of processed meat was a protective factor against the disease, which is generally considered to increase the risk of developing chronic disease, but previous studies have focused more on the association of processed meat with the risk of tumours, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular diseases ( 51 ).…”

Associations of Diet with Health Outcomes in the UK Biobank: A Systematic Review

“…Carter et al [ 53 ] suggested that two repeated measurements are acceptable to give a better strength of diet–disease associations. However, only a few have used a minimum of two repeated datasets [ 10 , 18 , 23 , 32 , 33 , 45 ].…”

“…Several other non-communicable diseases have been studied, including gout [ 39 , 40 ], inflammatory bowel diseases [ 41 , 42 , 43 ], and rheumatoid arthritis [ 44 , 45 ]. In most of these studies, to find a correlation between different food groups and diseases, FFQ is used for dietary assessment.…”