Assessing the causal relationship between obesity and venous thromboembolism through a Mendelian Randomization study

Observational studies have shown an association between obesity and venous thromboembolism (VTE) but it is not known if observed associations are causal, due to reverse causation or confounding bias. We conducted a Mendelian Randomization study of body mass index (BMI) and VTE. We identified 95 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that have been previously associated with BMI and assessed the association between genetically predicted high BMI and VTE leveraging data from a previously conducted GWAS within the INVENT consortium comprising a total of 7507 VTE cases and 52,632 controls of European ancestry. Five BMI SNPs were associated with VTE at P