Inflammation-Mediated Causal Effects of MRI-Defined Body-Composition Obesity Axes on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Asthma, and Allergic Rhinitis: A Mendelian Randomization Study

Background

Obesity is heterogeneous; conventional anthropometric measures combine fat distribution, ectopic fat deposition, and muscle volume, limiting refined causal inference for chronic airway diseases. We used four magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-defined obesity axes to assess their causal effects on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, and allergic rhinitis (AR), and to evaluate mediation by circulating inflammatory proteins.