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cohort·epidemiology, public health, psychiatry, endocrinology, nutrition·PMC10336095

BMI and well-being in people of East Asian and European ancestry: a Mendelian randomisation study

Translational Psychiatry · 12 authors, 6 centres

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TL;DR

This Mendelian randomisation study used genetic data from large cohorts of people of East Asian and European ancestry to investigate the causal relationship between higher BMI and subjective well-being. The central result was that the effect of higher BMI on health satisfaction differed by ancestry, with evidence for a positive association in East Asian populations but a negative association in European populations.

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Observational and genetically instrumented analyses revealed ancestry-specific relationships: higher BMI was associated with higher health satisfaction in individuals of East Asian ancestry (especially females) but lower health satisfaction in individuals of European ancestry. There was also evidence for non-linear relationships between BMI and well-being outcomes. A key limitation noted is the potential for setting-specific causality, where factors like social norms and stigma may influence the relationship differently across populations and regions.

STUDY TYPE

cohort

SPECIALTY

epidemiology

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ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10336095

BMI and well-being in people of East Asian and European ancestry: a Mendelian randomisation study

Translational Psychiatry

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ABSTRACT

Abstract Previous studies have linked higher body mass index (BMI) to lower subjective well-being in adult European ancestry populations. However, our understanding of these relationships across different populations is limited. Here, we investigated the association between BMI and well-being in people of (a) East Asian and (b) European ancestry in the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) and UK Biobank (UKB), respectively. Mendelian randomisation (MR) methods were used to test the relationship between BMI with (a) health satisfaction and (b) life satisfaction. One-sample MR enabled us to test effects in men and women separately and to test the role of cultural contexts by stratifying our analyses by urban and rural home location in both China and the UK. Further, we implemented a control function method to test the linearity of the BMI-well-being relationship. We found evidence of different associations between BMI and well-being in individuals of East Asian versus European ancestry. For example, a genetically instrumented higher BMI tentatively associated with higher health satisfaction in people of East Asian ancestry, especially in females (ß: 0.041, 95% CI: 0.002, 0.081). In contrast, there was a robust inverse association between higher genetically instrumented BMI and health satisfaction in all European ancestry UKB participants (ß: −0.183, 95% CI: −0.200, −0.165, P difference < 1.00E−15). We also showed the importance of considering non-linear relationships in the MR framework by providing evidence of non-linear relationships between BMI and health and life satisfaction. Overall, our study suggests potential setting-specific causality in the relationship between BMI and subjective well-being, with robust differences observed between East Asians and Europeans when considering very similar outcomes. We highlight the importance of (a) considering potential non-linear relationships in causal analyses and (b) testing causal relationships in different populations, as the casual nature of relationships, especially relationships influenced by social processes, may be setting-specific. Subject terms: Psychiatric disorders, Genomics

CITATION EXPORT

Jessica O’Loughlin, Francesco Casanova, Amanda Hughes et al.. BMI and well-being in people of East Asian and European ancestry: a Mendelian randomisation study. Translational Psychiatry. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-023-02539-7

AUTHORS

12 · 6 CENTRES

Jessica O’Loughlin, Francesco Casanova, Amanda Hughes, Zammy Fairhurst-Hunter, Liming Li, Zhengming Chen, Jack Bowden, Ed Watkins, Rachel M Freathy, Laura D Howe, Robin G Walters, Jessica Tyrrell

1College of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
2MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
3Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
4Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing, China
5MRC Population Health Research Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
6Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK