Stigmasterol, a plant-derived sterol involved in lipid metabolism, has been implicated in cancer-related biological processes. However, its causal relevance to brain tumor risk remains unclear. This study aimed to assess the causal relationships among genetically predicted stigmasterol levels, lipid metabolic traits, and brain tumor risk using Mendelian randomization (MR). Two-sample MR analysis was conducted using summary statistics from large-scale genome-wide association studies of European ancestry. Genetically predicted stigmasterol levels were used as the exposure, lipid metabolic traits as secondary exposures, and brain tumor risk as the outcome. Sensitivity analyses included MR-Egger, weighted median, heterogeneity tests, and leave-one-out analyses. Multivariable MR analysis was performed to evaluate the independent effects of stigmasterol and total cholesterol. Genetically predicted stigmasterol levels were not significantly associated with overall brain tumor risk (OR = 1.14, 95% CI 0.49–2.63), with consistent null findings across sensitivity analyses and analyses restricted to glioblastoma. In contrast, genetically predicted stigmasterol levels were associated with increased total cholesterol (odds ratio OR = 6.23, 95% confidence interval CI 1.19–32.66) and fatty acid levels (OR = 1.30, 95% CI 1.08–1.57). Total cholesterol showed suggestive and method-dependent evidence of an association with brain tumor risk in the weighted median analysis, whereas total fatty acids showed no consistent association. In multivariable MR analyses, neither stigmasterol nor total cholesterol showed an independent association with brain tumor risk. This MR study does not support a strong direct causal effect of genetically predicted stigmasterol on brain tumor risk. However, its close genetic association with lipid metabolism highlights lipid metabolic pathways as a relevant context for understanding brain tumor susceptibility.
Zhang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.