Abstract
BACKGROUND: Yogurt is reported to maintain the balance of gut microbiota and prevent disease, but the causal relationship remains unclear. METHODS: We selected data from UK Biobank and MiBioGen to perform Mendelian randomization analysis. MR Egger, inverse variance weighted, and so forth were employed to assess the causality between yogurt intake, low-fat and full-fat yogurt, and 196 taxa of gut microbiota. Parallelly, low-fat and full-fat yogurt were integrated to perform multivariable Mendelian randomization. Then, we summarized preliminary results according to microbiotic taxonomy. RESULTS: Statistics hinted at the implicit associations between yogurt intake and Haemophilus (OR = 2.08), Clostridium sensu stricto_1 (OR = 1.84), Peptostreptococcaceae (OR = 1.53), Betaproteobacteria (OR = 0.70), Bilophila (OR = 0.58), and Ruminococcaceae UCG-011 (OR = 0.40), along with the associations between low-fat yogurt and Eubacterium ruminantium (OR = 2.48), Methanobacteriaceae (OR = 3.06). The findings were causal and consistent, albeit with some false positive rates. CONCLUSIONS: Yogurt intake suggestively increased the abundance of Haemophilus, Clostridium sensu stricto_1, and Peptostreptococcaceae and decreased the abundance of Ruminococcaceae UCG-011, Betaproteobacteria and Bilophila; low-fat yogurt suggestively increased the abundance of Eubacterium ruminantium and Methanobacteriaceae.