Causal Effects of Yogurt Intake on Gut Microbiota: A European Mendelian Randomization Study

<h4>Background</h4>Yogurt is reported to maintain the balance of gut microbiota and prevent disease, but the causal relationship remains unclear.<h4>Methods</h4>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.<h4>Results</h4>Statistics hinted at the implicit associations between yogurt intake and <i>Haemophilus</i> (OR = 2.08), <i>Clostridium sensu stricto_1</i> (OR = 1.84), <i>Peptostreptococcaceae</i> (OR = 1.53), <i>Betaproteobacteria</i> (OR = 0.70), <i>Bilophila</i> (OR = 0.58), and <i>Ruminococcaceae UCG-011</i> (OR = 0.40), along with the associations between low-fat yogurt and <i>Eubacterium ruminantium</i> (OR = 2.48), <i>Methanobacteriaceae</i> (OR = 3.06). The findings were causal and consistent, albeit with some false positive rates.<h4>Conclusions</h4>Yogurt intake suggestively increased the abundance of <i>Haemophilus</i>, <i>Clostridium sensu stricto_1</i>, and <i>Peptostreptococcaceae</i> and decreased the abundance of <i>Ruminococcaceae UCG-011</i>, <i>Betaproteobacteria</i> and <i>Bilophila</i>; low-fat yogurt suggestively increased the abundance of <i>Eubacterium ruminantium</i> and <i>Methanobacteriaceae</i>.