ArticleAJE advances : research in epidemiology2025
The role of estimation in Mendelian randomization: should Mendelian randomization investigations provide estimates?
Article in AJE advances : research in epidemiology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Assessing the causal effects of environmental tobacco smoke exposure: a meta-analytic Mendelian randomization study.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 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
- Proteome-wide genetic analyses identify ASGR1 as a potential biomarker linking smoking with ischemic heart disease.Nature cardiovascular research · 2026Article
- Reassessing Instrument Strength in Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Analysis.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Extending the Use of Mendelian Randomisation With Non-Inherited Variants to Assess Socially Transmitted Parental Exposures Under Assortative Mating.Genetic epidemiology · 2026Article
- Mendelian Randomization Methods for Causal Inference: Estimands, Identification and Inference.Statistics in medicine · 2026Review
- Proteome-Guided Drug Target Discovery for Periodontitis.Journal of clinical periodontology · 2026Article
- Mendelian Randomization With Longitudinal Exposure Data: Simulation Study and Real Data Application.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- Genetic Downregulation of Interleukin-6 Signaling, Coagulation Function, and Risk of Thromboembolic Disease.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2025Article
- Circulating Protein Mediators Linking Genetically Predicted Smoking to Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm: A Genomic-Proteomic Analysis.Arteriosclerosis, thrombosis, and vascular biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mendelian randomization (MR) makes causal claims by treating genetic variation in an analogous way to randomization in a clinical trial. MR investigations can be viewed as analogous to a randomized encouragement design, in that genetic variants do not determine the precise level of an exposure, but increase liability to it. As such, an MR estimate typically does not represent an achievable or well-defined causal effect in terms of the exposure, as it reflects the impact of a life-long shift in the trajectory of the exposure, which likely differs between individuals. We advocate for MR investigations to be performed to assess evidence for a causal hypothesis, rather than to estimate a well-defined causal quantity. MR estimates are useful to combine evidence across genetic variants, to assess the validity of variants as instruments, to provide confidence intervals, and to compare estimates across outcomes. However, numerical estimates from MR should not be over-interpreted. The value of an MR investigation is not to quantify the magnitude of effect for a well-defined intervention in the exposure. Instead, it provides a distinct source of evidence to increase or decrease confidence in a causal hypothesis, which can be triangulated with evidence from other sources.
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.