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Association of exposure factors and their causal relationship with oral cancer: A Mendelian randomization study

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Abstract

Objectives

There is a strong association among risk factors for oral cancer (ORCA), such as smoking, alcohol consumption, fiber intake, and red meat intake. The apparent synergistic effects reported in previous observational studies may also underestimate the independent effects. Our study aims to further explore the potential etiology and causality of oral cancer.

Materials and methods

This study used the genome-wide associations study database (GWAS) in European populations for Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to explore exposure factors associated with ORCA and detect the genetic causality between these exposures and ORCA risk.

Results

Our results demonstrated that in univariate MR analysis, the five exposure factors (celery intake, average weekly beer and cider intake, spirits intake, and pork intake) were risk factors, and oily fish intake was a safety factor, but in multivariate MR analysis, pork intake had the greatest impact on oral cancer when the five food/drink intakes were simultaneously consumed.

Conclusions

The causal relationship between the five exposure factors (oily fish intake, celery intake, pork intake, average weekly beer and cider intake, and spirits intake) and oral cancer was analyzed. The causal effects of pork on oral cancer may be underestimated.

Clinical relevance

Prevention of oral cancer requires better education about lifestyle-related risk factors, and improved awareness and tools for early diagnosis. Our study provides some risk factors that cannot be ignored for the cause prevention of oral cancer, such as pork intake, and its role in oral cancer prevention and control.

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Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Abbreviations

ORCA:

Oral cancer

MR:

Mendelian randomization

GWAS:

Genome-wideassociationstudies

LDA:

Linear discriminant analysis

WM:

Weighted median

IVW:

Inverse variance weighted

SNP:

Single nucleotide polymorphism

MVMR:

Multivariate mendelian randomization

RCT:

Randomized controlled trials

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Editage ( https://www.editage.cn) for English language editing.

Funding

This work was funded by theJinhua Science and Technology Project Social Development Key Project (2022-3-133) and Zhejiang Medical and health science and technology project young talent project (2022RC288) .

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jinhua People’s Hospital, Jinhua, 321000, Zhejiang, China

    Yunyao Li

  2. Jinhua Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital, Jinhua Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Jinhua, 321000, Zhejiang, China

    Kang Wang, Xiaobing Li & Linqian Zhang

Authors
  1. Yunyao Li
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  2. Kang Wang
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  3. Xiaobing Li
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  4. Linqian Zhang
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Contributions

Material preparation, data collection and analysis were conducted by L.Y. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Z.L, and all the authors have commented on previous versions of the manuscript. L.X and W.K provided the methodology, reviewed the draft of the paper, and approved the final draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Linqian Zhang.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The summary statistics for MR study were obtained from GWAS (https://www.ebi.ac.uk). All these data got ethical approval and freely available.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Li, Y., Wang, K., Li, X. et al. Association of exposure factors and their causal relationship with oral cancer: A Mendelian randomization study. Clin Oral Invest 28, 228 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00784-024-05608-3

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