Coffee consumption and risk of breast cancer: a Mendelian Randomization study

Merete Ellingjord-Dale*, Nikos Papadimitriou, Jue Sheng Ong, Benjamin L Elsworth, Sarah J Lewis, Richard M Martin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

19 Citations (Scopus)
110 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Background:
Observational studies have reported either null or weak protective associations for coffee consumption and risk of breast cancer.

Methods:
We conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization randomization (MR) analysis to evaluate the relationship between coffee consumption and breast cancer risk using 33 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with coffee consumption from a genome-wide association (GWA) study on 212,119 female UK Biobank participants of White British ancestry. Risk estimates for breast cancer were retrieved from publicly available GWA summary statistics from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC) on 122,977 cases (of which 69,501 were estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, 21,468 ER-negative) and 105,974 controls of European ancestry. Random-effects inverse variance weighted (IVW) MR analyses were performed along with several sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of potential MR assumption violations.

Results:
One cup per day increase in genetically predicted coffee consumption in women was not associated with risk of total (IVW random-effects; odds ratio (OR): 0.91, 95% confidence intervals (CI): 0.80-1.02, P: 0.12, P for instrument heterogeneity: 7.17e-13), ER-positive (OR=0.90, 95% CI: 0.79-1.02, P: 0.09) and ER-negative breast cancer (OR: 0.88, 95% CI: 0.75-1.03, P: 0.12). Null associations were also found in the sensitivity analyses using MR-Egger (total breast cancer; OR: 1.00, 95% CI: 0.80-1.25), weighted median (OR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.89-1.05) and weighted mode (OR: 1.00, CI: 0.93-1.07).

Conclusions:
The results of this large MR study do not support an association of genetically predicted coffee consumption on breast cancer risk, but we cannot rule out existence of a weak association.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0236904
Number of pages15
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume16
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Jan 2021

Keywords

  • Coffee consumption
  • breast cancer risk
  • Mendelian randomizaton

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