Tea Intake Drives Esophageal Diseases: New Insights From a Comprehensive Mendelian Randomization Study

Background An increasing number of cohort studies have indicated a correlation between tea intake and esophageal diseases, but the exact causal relationship has not been definitively established. Therefore, we employed Mendelian randomization (MR) to simulate randomized trial groups and to assess the causal relationship between tea intake and esophageal diseases. Methods SNPs related to tea intake, along with outcomes data on esophagus diseases such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GRED), Barrett’s esophagus, esophageal cancer, and cardia achalasia, were extracted from public genome-wide association studies (GWAS). A MR analysis was then performed using publicly available GWAS data to investigate the potential causal relationship. The effect estimates were primarily calculated using the fixed-effects or random-effects inverse-variance-weighted method based on different heterogeneity. Results Totally, 41 SNPs related to tea intake among 447,485 participants in GWAS. Based on the primary causal effects model using MR analyses with the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method, tea intake was demonstrated a significantly related to the risk of GRED (OR, 1.2276; 95% CI, 1.0352–1.4556; P = 1.835E-02), Barrett’s esophagus (OR, 1.5054; 95% CI, 1.0208–2.2202; P = 3.903E-02) and esophageal cancer (OR, 1.0034; 95% CI, 1.0014–1.0054; P = 7.415E-04), while it showed no significant correlation with cardia achalasia (OR, 0.3781; 95% CI, 0.0694–2.0590; P = 0.261). Conclusion The MR analysis conducted in this study revealed a positive causal relationship between tea intake and GRED, Barrett’s esophagus, and esophageal cancer. Further large-sample prospective studies are needed to validate these findings and to provide appropriate recommendations regarding esophageal disease screening and diagnosis among patients with heavy tea intake.