Gut microbiota causally impacts adrenal function: a two-sample mendelian randomization study

Abstract

Some studies have reported that the gut microbiota can influence adrenal-related hormone levels. However, the causal effects of the gut microbiota on adrenal function remain unknown. Therefore, we employed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study to systematically investigate the impact of gut microbiota on the function of different regions of the adrenal gland. The summary statistics for gut microbiota and adrenal-related hormones used in the two-sample MR analysis were derived from publicly available genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In the MR analysis, inverse variance weighting (IVW) was used as the primary method, with MR-Egger, weighted median, and cML-MA serving as supplementary methods for causal inference. Sensitivity analyses such as the MR-Egger intercept test, Cochran’s Q test, and leave-one-out analysis were used to assess pleiotropy and heterogeneity. We identified 27 causal relationships between 23 gut microbiota and adrenal function using the IVW method. Among these, Sellimonas enhanced the function of the adrenal cortex reticularis zone (beta = 0.008, 95% CI: 0.002–0.013, P = 0.0057). The cML-MA method supported our estimate (beta = 0.009, 95% CI: 0.004–0.013, P = 2 × 10 − 4 ). Parasutterella , Sutterella , and Anaerofilum affect the functioning of different regions of the adrenal gland. Notably, pleiotropy was not observed. Our findings revealed that the gut microbiota is causally associated with adrenal function. This enhances our understanding of the gut-microbiota-brain axis and provides assistance in the early diagnosis and treatment of adrenal-related diseases in clinical practice. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-024-73420-w.