Association between smoking and alcohol drinking and benign adrenal tumours: a Mendelian randomization study

In recent years, the detection rate of adrenal tumours has increased, but it is unclear whether smoking and alcohol drinking are risk factors for benign adrenal tumours. A study employed Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to explore the causal relationship between smoking, alcohol drinking and susceptibility to benign adrenal tumours.
Researchers acquired large-scale data from publicly accessible databases on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) pertaining to smoking, alcohol drinking and benign adrenal tumours. A total of 11 sets of instrumental variables (IVs) and 281 associated single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) loci were identified.
There is no causal relationship between smoking status, alcohol drinking status, alcohol intake frequency, alcohol taken with meals, alcohol consumption and benign adrenal tumours, while pack years of smoking and cigarettes per day are risk factors for benign adrenal tumours. The analysis revealed that both the pack years of smoking and cigarettes per day were positively associated with an increased risk of benign adrenal tumours (OR = 2.853, 95%CI = 1.384-5.878; OR = 1.543, 95%CI = 1.147-2.076). Two SNPs (rs8042849 in the analysis of pack years of smoking and rs8034191 in the analysis of cigarettes per day) significantly drove the observed causal effects.
Two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis showed a causal effect between smoking but not alcohol consumption and benign adrenal tumours.
Source: Peng K, Liu Q, Wang N, Wang L, Duan X, Ding D. Association between smoking and alcohol drinking and benign adrenal tumours: a Mendelian randomization study. Endocrine. 2024 Feb 26.