Serum anti-inflammatory and inflammatory markers have no causal impact on telomere length: a Mendelian randomization study

INTRODUCTION: The relationship between inflammatory and anti-inflammatory markers and telomere length (TL), a biological index of aging, is still poorly understood. By applying a 2-sample Mendelian randomization (MR), we investigated the causal associations between adiponectin, bilirubin, C-reactive protein (CRP), leptin, and serum uric acid (SUA) with TL. MATERIAL AND METHODS: MR was implemented by using summary-level data from the largest ever genome-wide association studies (GWAS) conducted on our interested exposure and TL. Inverse variance weighted method (IVW), weighted median (WM)-based method, MR-Egger, MR-Robust Adjusted Profile Score (RAPS), and MR-Pleiotropy RESidual Sum and Outlier (PRESSO) were applied. Sensitivity analysis was conducted using the leave-one-out method. RESULTS: > 0.161). The results of leave-one-out method demonstrated that the links are not driven because of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). CONCLUSIONS: Our results highlight that neither the anti-inflammatory nor pro-inflammatory markers tested have any significant causal effect on TL. The casual role of bilirubin on TL still needs to be investigated.