Obesity, Visceral Adipose Tissue, and Essential Hypertension: Evidence From a Mendelian Randomization Study and Mediation Analysis.

ABSTRACT: This study aims to investigate the causal relationship between obesity and essential hypertension, and evaluate the mediation effect of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) by Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. We included body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-hip ratio (WHR), WC adjusted for BMI (WCadjbmi), and WHR adjusted for BMI (WHRadjbmi) as obesity-related anthropometric traits. In the bidirectional MR analyses, we found that higher BMI (OR, 1.638; p = 3.97 × 10^-19), WC (OR, 1.702; p = 1.45 × 10^-12), and WHR (OR, 1.863; p = 1.84 × 10^-8) were significantly associated with increased risk of essential hypertension, while no evidence of reverse causality was observed. Then, in the two-step MR analyses, all five anthropometric traits had a p

SUBMITTER: Cheng C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12012245 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature