ArticleTranslational psychiatry2021
Obesity and atypical depression symptoms: findings from Mendelian randomization in two European cohorts.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- The efficacy of topical aminophylline in local fat reduction: A systematic review.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2023Pooled it
- Genetic clusters of BMI reveal symptom-specific causal effects on depression.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Immunometabolic blood biomarkers of developmental trajectories of depressive symptoms: findings from the ALSPAC birth cohort.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Genetic associations and candidate functional genes linking depression and obesity: a multi-omics integrative study.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Article
- Genetic susceptibility to depression and risk of cardiometabolic diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 21 Mendelian randomisation studies.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Altered food liking in depression is driven by macronutrient composition.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Depressive symptoms mediate the association between sleep disorders and gallstone disease: a causal mediation analysis of NHANES 2017-2020.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Immuno-metabolic depression: from concept to implementation.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2025Review
- Evidence of symptom specificity for depression in multiple sclerosis: A two sample Mendelian randomization study.Multiple sclerosis and related disorders · 2024Article
- Evaluating the distinct effects of body mass index at childhood and adulthood on adult major psychiatric disorders.Science advances · 2024Article
- Childhood obesity and adolescent follow-up depressive symptoms: exploring a moderated mediation model of body esteem and gender.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2024Article
- Mendelian randomization studies of depression: evidence, opportunities, and challenges.Annals of general psychiatry · 2023Review
- Obesity and psychological distress.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Body mass index and clinical outcomes in individuals with major depressive disorder: Findings from the GSRD European Multicenter Database.Journal of affective disorders · 2023Article
- Metabolomics signatures of depression: the role of symptom profiles.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
- Causal Association Between Obesity, Circulating Glutamine Levels, and Depression: A Mendelian Randomization Study.The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2023Article
- The causal association between obesity and gastric cancer and shared molecular signatures: a large-scale Mendelian randomization and multi-omics analysis.Frontiers in oncology · 2023Article
- Circulating Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1 Levels and Migraine Risk: A Mendelian Randomization Study.Neurology and therapy · 2022Article
- Bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis identifies causal associations between relative carbohydrate intake and depression.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Studies considering the causal role of body mass index (BMI) for the predisposition of major depressive disorder (MDD) based on a Mendelian Randomization (MR) approach have shown contradictory results. These inconsistent findings may be attributable to the heterogeneity of MDD; in fact, several studies have documented associations between BMI and mainly the atypical subtype of MDD. Using a MR approach, we investigated the potential causal role of obesity in both the atypical subtype and its five specific symptoms assessed according to the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in two large European cohorts, CoLaus|PsyCoLaus (n = 3350, 1461 cases and 1889 controls) and NESDA|NTR (n = 4139, 1182 cases and 2957 controls). We first tested general obesity measured by BMI and then the body fat distribution measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Results suggested that BMI is potentially causally related to the symptom increase in appetite, for which inverse variance weighted, simple median and weighted median MR regression estimated slopes were 0.68 (SE = 0.23, p = 0.004), 0.77 (SE = 0.37, p = 0.036), and 1.11 (SE = 0.39, p = 0.004). No causal effect of BMI or WHR was found on the risk of the atypical subtype or for any of the other atypical symptoms. Our findings show that higher obesity is likely causal for the specific symptom of increase in appetite in depressed participants and reiterate the need to study depression at the granular level of its symptoms to further elucidate potential causal relationships and gain additional insight into its biological underpinnings.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.