Exploring the impact of dietary factors on intracranial aneurysm risk: insights from Mendelian randomization analysis

While existing research has established a link between dietary habits and the incidence of intracranial aneurysms, the application of Mendelian randomization to explore this association remains largely uncharted. In our study, we analyzed a wide array of dietary factors using data from the IEU Open GWAS project, which included meat varieties, vegetarian foods, cereal and the frequency of alcohol intake. We included pooled intracranial aneurysm GWAS data from a comprehensive dataset of 7,495 cases. In MR analysis, we employed multiple Mendelian randomization techniques such as MR-Egger, Inverse Variance Weighted methods and rigorously controlled the false discovery rates through the Bonferroni correction across 10 dietary exposures. Our analysis identified a significant association between cooked vegetables (OR: 9.939; 95% CI: 2.066 ~ 47.822; <i>p</i> = 0.0042) and an elevated risk of intracranial aneurysms. Besides, the initial analysis suggested a statistically significant association between the dried fruit (OR: 0.385; 95%CI: 0.159 ~ 0.935; <i>p</i> = 0.0350), frequency of alcohol intake (OR: 1.419; 95% CI: 1.039 ~ 1.937; <i>p</i> = 0.0276) and the risk of intracranial aneurysms. However, this significance was not sustained after applying the Bonferroni correction for multiple testing, indicating a need for cautious interpretation despite the initially promising findings. This study identified a clear causal link between cooked vegetable intake and an increased risk of intracranial aneurysm, while suggesting a potential connection between the frequency of alcohol intake and the elevated risk, although this association did not reach statistical significance after multiple testing corrections.