ArticleInternational journal of epidemiology2019
An examination of multivariable Mendelian randomization in the single-sample and two-sample summary data settings.
Article in International journal of epidemiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 688 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
688 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Causal association between lipoproteins and risk of coronary artery disease-a systematic review and meta-analysis of Mendelian randomization studies.Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society · 2026Pooled it
- Lifecourse genome-wide association study meta-analysis refines the critical life stages for adiposity's influence on breast cancer risk.Science advances · 2026Pooled it
- Causal association between plasma proteins and lung adenocarcinoma: a two-sample mendelian randomization study.BMC pulmonary medicine · 2025Pooled it
- The causal relationship between 179 lipid species and urolithiasis: a bidirectional and multivariable Mendelian randomization study combined with meta-analysis.Lipids in health and disease · 2025Pooled it
- Cross-ancestry analyses of Chinese and European populations reveal insights into the genetic architecture and disease implication of metabolites.Cell genomics · 2025Pooled it
- Immunological Insights into the Causal Link Between Arthritis, Osteoarthritis, and Frailty: An Integrated Analytical Study.International journal of medical sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Body mass index and type 2 diabetes liability in osteomyelitis and cellulitis: A cross-biobank Mendelian randomization study.Medicine · 2026Article
- Proteome-wide genetic analyses identify ASGR1 as a potential biomarker linking smoking with ischemic heart disease.Nature cardiovascular research · 2026Article
- Multilevel genome-wide analysis reveals shared genetic architecture between acute pancreatitis and body fat distribution.World journal of emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Effects of Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Depression on Cardiopulmonary and Abdominal Organ Structure.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- A flexible framework for robust and efficient Mendelian randomization with debiasing.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- TL-HDMR: a transfer learning framework for advancing equitable causal inference reveals metabolic signatures of stroke across multiple ancestries.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Applying Bayesian Multivariable Mendelian Randomisation to Prioritise Candidate Causal Traits From High-Dimensional Data: Illustration From Estimation of the Effect of Maternal Metabolites on Offspring Birthweight.Genetic epidemiology · 2026Article
- Risk of Erythritol-Associated Ischemic Stroke: Integrated Genetic, Transcriptomic, and Machine Learning Evidence.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Early‑life head circumference is causally associated with adult executive function through cortical surface area expansion.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Causal inference for multiple risk factors and diseases from genomics data.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Comparing genome-wide significant and chemosensory variants as instruments for dietary patterns in Mendelian randomization.International journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Biological Aging, Immune Phenotypes, and Susceptibility to COVID-19 and Sepsis: A Mendelian Randomization Study.Virus research · 2026Article
- Investigating relationships between loneliness, social isolation and health.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Decoding the lipid etiology of atherogenic index of plasma and gout: establishing the causal role of triglycerides through NHANES, Mendelian randomization, and network pharmacology.Cardiovascular diabetology. Endocrinology reports · 2026Article
628 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMendelian randomization (MR) is a powerful tool in epidemiology that can be used to estimate the causal effect of an exposure on an outcome in the presence of unobserved confounding, by utilizing genetic variants that are instrumental variables (IVs) for the exposure. This has been extended to multivariable MR (MVMR) to estimate the effect of two or more exposures on an outcome. METHODS AND
resultsWe use simulations and theory to clarify the interpretation of estimated effects in a MVMR analysis under a range of underlying scenarios, where a secondary exposure acts variously as a confounder, a mediator, a pleiotropic pathway and a collider. We then describe how instrument strength and validity can be assessed for an MVMR analysis in the single-sample setting, and develop tests to assess these assumptions in the popular two-sample summary data setting. We illustrate our methods using data from UK Biobank to estimate the effect of education and cognitive ability on body mass index.
conclusionMVMR analysis consistently estimates the direct causal effect of an exposure, or exposures, of interest and provides a powerful tool for determining causal effects in a wide range of scenarios with either individual- or summary-level data.
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