Trial Report Causal inference between physical activity and chronic diseases: insights from a two-sample Mendelian randomization study, 2024, Qiu et al

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Peng Qiu, Junyu Wu, Min Li, Zhiguang Zhao, Qirong Wang,
Causal inference between physical activity and chronic diseases: insights from a two-sample Mendelian randomization study,
Sports Medicine and Health Science,
2024,
,
ISSN 2666-3376,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2024.09.002.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666337624000982)

Abstract

Chronic diseases are major causes of global death and disability, significantly impacting individual health and imposing economic burdens.

This study aims to investigate the causal relationship between physical activity (PA) and the development of chronic diseases.

Using a Mendelian randomization (MR) approach, we incorporated average PA and its subtypes (more than 450 000 participants) as exposure measures and eight chronic diseases as outcome measures.

Data were obtained from the European Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS).

The primary causal analysis technique employed was the inverse variance weighting (IVW) method, with MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted mode, and simple mode used to validate the results. Sensitivity analyses were performed to assess heterogeneity and pleiotropy.

The IVW approach results show that vigorous physical activity (VPA) is associated with a modest reduction in the risk of major coronary heart disease (OR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.91-0.99, p = 0.01).

The causal directions of the other four MR methods are consistent with this result and validated by sensitivity analysis.

No substantial associations were found between other levels of PA and chronic disease.

Our findings underscore the importance of VPA in preventive cardiology and suggest its potential role in public health initiatives.

Further research should explore the impact of PA on different demographic groups and the dose-response relationship of VPA on heart health.

Keywords
Physical activity
Chronic diseases
Major coronary heart disease
Mendelian randomization
Causal inference

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I’ve only read the abstract, but it’s conclusion that vigourous physical activity has a modestly protective effect of reducing the risk of major currently heart disease is not exactly earth-shattering. And no other measures of physical activity had an effect.

CFS did not have a significant association with exercise (Fig 1)
It doesn’t mention chronic fatigue syndrome (which it included in the study) as being affected bKy physical activity. It used data from UK Biobank

 

More a case of barely audible, I would say.

As far as I am concerned the main reason to exercise is to make it possible to eat a tasty meal now and again without getting fat (no trivial result). Beyond that I am unimpressed, other than by the injuries you get from exercising.

 

Sounds interesting.

The GWAS for CFS (code: ukb-b-8961) had 2076 cases of self-reported CFS and 460.857 controls.

Vigorous physical activity (VPA) and moderate to vigorous physical (MPA) were self-reported but light (LPA) and average physical activity (APA) were based on accelerometer data worn for 7 days. The paper focuses on the vigorous activity while it seems like the objectively measured activity level resulted in null results:

From table S6 from the supplementary data:

 

Here are the SNP that were used for CFS: