Genetics

This post covers Ge and colleagues' 2023 metabolome-wide Mendelian randomization study in the Journal of Neuroimmunology, which tested 571 circulating metabolites against the IMSGC multiple sclerosis GWAS. It walks through the instrument design and its two significance thresholds, the lipoprotein result in which the same lipids reverse sign between large VLDL and very large HDL, serine as the strongest amino acid signal and its link to Epstein-Barr virus biology, the ketone body estimates that survive outlier removal while contradicting the ketogenic diet literature, and the tiering that separates six well-supported findings from twenty-three weaker ones. It also flags a direction reversal between the paper's Results and Discussion sections for the two gamma-glutamyl amino acids.