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Selecting likely causal risk factors from high-throughput experiments using multivariable Mendelian randomization

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Abstract

Abstract: Modern high-throughput experiments provide a rich resource to investigate causal determinants of disease risk. Mendelian randomization (MR) is the use of genetic variants as instrumental variables to infer the causal effect of a specific risk factor on an outcome. Multivariable MR is an extension of the standard MR framework to consider multiple potential risk factors in a single model. However, current implementations of multivariable MR use standard linear regression and hence perform poorly with many risk factors. Here, we propose a two-sample multivariable MR approach based on Bayesian model averaging (MR-BMA) that scales to high-throughput experiments. In a realistic simulation study, we show that MR-BMA can detect true causal risk factors even when the candidate risk factors are highly correlated. We illustrate MR-BMA by analysing publicly-available summarized data on metabolites to prioritise likely causal biomarkers for age-related macular degeneration.

Description

Funder: UK Medical Research Council (MC UU 00002/7) and Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society (Grant Number 204623/Z/16/Z)

Keywords

Article, /631/114/2415, /631/208/205/2138, /692/53, /692/308/174, /45/43, /45/47, article

Journal Title

Nature Communications

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723

Volume Title

11

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group UK