The role of immune cells in mediating the effect of hepatoovarian axis- a mendelian randomization study on ovarian aging and NAFLD.

Observational studies have emphasized the association of female reproductive factors with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), however, the causal relationship between them still needs further investigation. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic correlation between reproductive factors and NAFLD. First, two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) was performed to estimate the causal associations between age at menarche (AAM), age at natural menopause (ANM), age at first birth (AFB), and NAFLD by using pooled data from the Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) from the Genetic Consortium. Causality was tested by a variety of methods including inverse variance weighting (IVW), MR-Egger regression, and weighted median method.