Yingjun Li

Zhejiang University School of Public Health · Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics

Background Previous studies on whole grain consumption had inconsistent findings and lacked quantitative assessments of evidence quality. Therefore, we aimed to summarize updated findings using the Burden of Proof analysis (BPRF) to investigate the relationship of whole grain consumption on type 2 diabetes (T2D), colorectal cancer (CRC), stroke, an...

Background Educational inequalities in suicide have become increasingly prominent over the past decade. Elucidating modifiable risk factors that serve as intermediaries in the impact of low educational attainment on suicide has the potential to reduce health disparities. Aims To examine the risk factors that mediate the relationship between educat...

The association between osteoarthritis (OA) and gastrointestinal disorders was found in observational studies. However, the causality is still elusive. A bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using genome wide association studies data was conducted to assess the causal association between OA and gastrointestinal diseases [including pe...

Objective Osteoarthritis (OA) and asthma are two common chronic diseases with increasing incidence and prevalence, whereas there has been rare evidence to suggest the relationship between OA and asthma. This study aimed to analyze the causal relationship between OA and asthma. Methods Existing studies of the relationship between asthma and OA publ...

Background: Observational studies have demonstrated a strong bidirectional association between frailty and depression, but it remains unclear whether this association reflects causality. This study aimed to examine the bidirectional causal relationship between frailty and depression. Methods: Using genome-wide association study summary data, two...

Smoking has been considered a risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in observational studies. To assess whether smoking plays a causal role in IPF, we performed a Mendelian randomization study using genetic association data of 10 382 cases with IPF and 968 080 controls. We found that genetic predisposition to smoking initiation (based...

Background Considerable evidence has been reported that tobacco use could cause alterations in gut microbiota composition. The microbiota-gut–brain axis also in turn hinted at a possible contribution of the gut microbiota to smoking. However, population-level studies with a higher evidence level for causality are lacking. Methods This study utiliz...

Background: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fatal lung disease with a high burden of both pulmonary and extrapulmonary comorbidities. Research question: Do these comorbidities have causal relationships with IPF? Study design and methods: We searched PubMed to pinpoint possible IPF-related comorbid conditions. Bidirectional Mendelian r...

Background: Existing studies have indicated that mitochondrial dysfunction may contribute to osteoarthritis (OA) development. However, the causal association between mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) characterization and OA has not been extensively explored. Methods: Two-sample Mendelian randomization was performed to calculate the impact of mitochondrial...

Introduction Chronic pain is a public health concern throughout the world. Ascertaining and managing its risk factors helps develop well-directed treatment plans and prevention strategies. Phthalates (PAEs) exposure leads to various health problems. The present study aims to explore the potential correlation between urinary PAEs metabolites and chr...

Objectives: The role of Vitamin D (VD) in calcium balance and bone health makes VD a vital factor in osteoarthritis (OA). Studies that have evaluated the effect of VD on OA patients have mainly been performed on a short-term basis. In this analysis, we aimed to evaluate whether VD was associated with mortality, a long-term outcome, in OA patients....

Background: Frailty is strongly associated with cardiometabolic diseases in observational studies. However, whether the observed association reflects causality requires clarification. We performed a bidirectional Mendelian randomisation (MR) study to assess the causal relationship of frailty, measured by the frailty index (FI), with coronary arter...

Considerable evidence has been reported that tobacco use could cause alterations in gut microbiota composition. The microbiota-gut-brain axis also in turn hinted at a possible contribution of gut microbiota to smoking. However, population-level studies with a higher evidence level for causality are lacking. This study deployed two-sample bidirectio...

Background Observational studies indicate that osteoarthritis (OA) and coronary artery disease (CAD), as well as myocardial infarction (MI), are often diagnosed as comorbid diseases. We performed a bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) study to demonstrate whether there is a causal relationship between OA, CAD, and MI. Methods We extracted si...

The potential consequences of the number of chronic pain sites (referred to multisite chronic pain) on the risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) remain unclear. We attempted to investigate the causality of multisite chronic pain with CVDs and its possible causal mediators. Using summary genome-wide association statistics, two-sample Mendelian rand...

Objective The epidemiological evidence on the link between osteoarthritis (OA) and stroke remains inconclusive. Herein, we adopted a two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) study to determine the causality relationship between OA and stroke. Design Summary-level data derived from the published genome-wide association studies (GWAS) w...

Background: Alcohol consumption and smoking have been reported to be associated with psoriasis risk. However, a conclusion with high-quality evidence of causality couldn't be easily drawn from regular observational studies. Objectives: This study aims to assess the causal associations of alcohol consumption and smoking with psoriasis. Methods:...

Evidence from observational studies for the effects of circulating antioxidants on the risk of breast and ovarian cancer was inconsistent. To elucidate the potential causal association of circulating antioxidants on the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, we carried out a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study. The instrumental variables as p...

Objectives The bidirectional association between osteoarthritis (OA) and urate levels and gout, though well-documented, is inconclusive. This Mendelian randomization (MR) study aims to examine the bidirectional causality between OA and urate levels as well as gout. Methods We used summary statistics data for serum urate levels from 288,649 CKDGen...

Background Observational studies have shown possible bidirectional association between type 2 diabetes (T2D) and pulmonary function, but the causality is not well defined. The purpose of this study is to investigate genetic correlation and causal relationship of T2D and glycemic traits with pulmonary function. Methods By leveraging summary statist...

Purpose Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become the most common liver disease in the western countries. We aimed to ascertain the relationship of urinary phthalates concentrations with presence of NAFLD among US adults. Methods A cross-sectional analysis of data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) during 200...

Objective: This two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study aimed to examine the potential causal association of telomere length (TL) with the risk of osteoarthritis (OA). Method: The summary-level data for OA was derived from the United Kingdom Biobank cohort, including 50,508 individuals of European descent. Eighteen single nucleotide polymorph...

Background: Accumulating evidence from observational studies suggested that circulating adiponectin levels are associated with the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but the causality remains unknown. We aimed to assess the causal relationship of adiponectin with RA risk. Methods: Based on summary statistics from large-scale genome-wide association...

Phthalates have been extensively detected in environmental and biological matrices. Exposure to phthalates is implicated in various human diseases. In this study, we conducted a cross-sectional study to determine whether urinary phthalate metabolite concentrations were correlated with prevalence of sarcopenia in US adult population. We included 356...

Whether polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) exposure is associated with muscle mass and muscle strength has been scantly investigated. The cross-sectional associations of urinary PAH metabolites with appendicular skeletal muscle mass and hand grip strength in adults were first investigated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey...

Objectives : Previous studies have indicated that dietary monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) are associated with decreased risk of osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, the causality of the observed associations is largely undetermined. We sought to ascertain the potential causal roles of two most common MUFAs, oleic acid and...

Background and Aims The impact of vitamin C supplementation on the risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) remains uncertain with inconsistent evidence obtained from observational studies and randomized clinical trials (RCTs). We aimed to assess possible causal associations of vitamin C with major CVD events as well as their risk factors using Mende...

Purpose: Previous epidemiological evidence showed that type 2 diabetes (T2D) is related with gout. However, the causality and the direction of this association are still not definitely elucidated. We aimed to investigate bidirectional associations of T2D and glycemic traits with serum urate concentrations and gout using a Mendelian randomization (...

Background There is very little information about the association between physical activity (PA) and the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of PA on subsequent risk of developing RA. Methods A literature search was performed in PubMed and Web of Science up to 19 September 2020. Observational st...

The potential association of exposure to phthalates with muscle strength was reported in previous animal experiments. However, their association was rarely directly investigated in general populations. Thus, we aimed to ascertain the association of exposure to phthalates with grip strength using cross-sectional analysis which included 2436 individu...

Objective This two-sample Mendelian randomization study aimed to delve into the effects of genetically predicted adipokine levels on OA. Methods Summary statistic data for OA originated from a meta-analysis of a genome-wide association study with an overall 50 508 subjects of European ancestry. Publicly available summary data from four genome-wide...

Phthalates have extensive existence in the living environment of human, probably tightly associated with multiple human diseases. The present study aimed to exploratorily investigate the association of urinary phthalate metabolites with osteoarthritis (OA) in American adults by exploiting the data extracted from National Health and Nutrition Examin...

Aim: Circulating chemerin level has been reported to be higher in patients with various types of cancer. However, the conclusions obtained are not unified. The aim of present study is to draw an evidence-based conclusion on the relationship between circulating chemerin and risk of cancer. Materials & methods: A systematic search was carried out in...

Objective The majority of the published studies ascertaining the relationships between low bone mineral density (BMD) and mortality highlighted the elderly population with limited sample size. Our study aimed to ascertain the relationships in general population. Methods This study ascertained the relationships between BMD levels in femur and lumba...

Background RP11-108K3.2 was recently identified as a novel long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) transcript, and several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified in its coding region. This study aimed to explore the associations of tagSNPs in RP11-108K3.2 with the risk of colorectal cancer and their effects on its expression. Methods A t...

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the promoter region of long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) could play a regulatory role in its expression level and then get involved in colorectal cancer (CRC). Thus, we conducted a two-stage case-control study to investigate the associations of Tag SNPs within the promoter region of selected lincRN...

The metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1), a well-known long non-coding RNA, is involved in pathogenesis and progress of multiple tumors. However, no study has been performed to investigate the relationship between the genetic variants in promoter region of MALAT1 and colorectal cancer risk. In this study, we conducted a t...

There is a widespread occurrence of antisense transcripts' regulation on cancer-related genes in cancer biology. RP11-392P7.6 is antisense to the coding region of cancer-related gene GPRC5D, which has been found recently. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations of tagSNPs in the promoter region of RP11-392P7.6 with the risk of col...

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are widely transcribed in the genome, but their expression profile and roles in colorectal cancer are not well understood. The aim of this study was to investigate the long non-coding RNA expression profile in colorectal cancer and look for potential diagnostic biomarkers of colorectal cancer. Long non-coding RNA micr...

Background: This study aimed to investigate the associations of selected polymorphisms in RP11-650L12.2 with the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC) in a Chinese population. Methods: A total of 821 CRC cases (test set: 320, validation set: 501) and 857 healthy controls (test set: 319, validation set: 538) were enrolled in this study. Demographic cha...

Background: The prognostic value of long interspersed nucleotide element-1 (LINE-1) methylation in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) remains uncertain. We have therefore performed a meta-analysis to elucidate this issue. Methods: The PubMed and Web of Science databases were searched for studies published up to 30 June 2016 which reported on...

Objective: Most studies on obesity and mortality use a single anthropometric measure. Less is known about the effects of weight change on mortality. This study examined changes in body mass index (ΔBMI) and waist circumference (ΔWC) and subsequent all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Methods: The study was conducted in the Women's Lifestyle a...

Background: The intake of fish and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) may benefit cognitive function. However, optimal intake recommendations for protection are unknown. Objective: We systematically investigated associations between fish and PUFA intake and mild-to-severe cognitive impairment risk. Design: Studies that reported risk estimates...

Dietary patterns, which represent a broader picture of food and nutrient consumption, have gained increasing interest over the last decades. In a cohort design, we followed 27 544 women aged 29-49 years from baseline in 1991-1992. We collected data from an FFQ at baseline and body weight (BW) and waist circumference (WC) data both at baseline and a...

The relationship between physical activity (PA) before cancer diagnosis and all cancer mortality among the general population is not well defined because of inconsistent results from published studies. Thus, the lack of a meta-analysis that addresses that issue prompted the current report. We conducted a literature search of PubMed and Web of Scien...

Preliminary studies of Vγ9Vδ2 T cells and zoledronate (ZOL) present promising reasons to exploit their immunotherapeutic potential for osteosarcoma treatment (OS). ZOL is a third-generation aminobisphosphonate (ABP) and is well established in the management of cancer-induced bone disease. However, ZOL is characterized by high tropism for bone matri...

A healthy Nordic dietary pattern has shown beneficial effects in relation to several chronic diseases. However, no study has evaluated the association between a healthy Nordic food index (HNFI) and risk of breast cancer. We conducted a prospective cohort study including 44,296 women, aged 29-49 at baseline in 1991-1992, who completed a food frequen...

Background Recently, the Nordic diet has gained interest, and a healthy Nordic food index has been developed, which has been found inversely related to colorectal cancer among Danish women. This single finding, however, requires replication in other cohorts. Methods We conducted a prospective study in the Women's Lifestyle and Health cohort, includ...

Background Low birth weight is strongly correlated with an increased risk of adult diseases. Additionally, low birth weight might be a risk factor for asthma later in life. Methods A systematic literature search of the PubMed database from 1966 to November 2013 was conducted. The criteria for inclusion of papers were as follows: case–control or co...

A causal link between alcohol consumption and colorectal cancer (CRC) was established only recently by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. However, the quantitative association between alcohol drinking and CRC mortality is still an open question. We performed a systemic review and meta-analysis on epidemiological studies to quantify th...

The PI3K signaling pathway plays an important role in the development of colorectal cancer (CRC) and other neoplasm. Somatic phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) mutations and deletions or epigenetic silencing have been observed in multiple tumor types including CRC. To assess the association of PTEN polymorphisms and life...

Background The apoB/apoA1 ratio has been reported to be associated with the metabolic syndrome (MetS), and it may be a more convenient biomarker in MetS predicting. However, whether apoB/apoA1 ratio is a better indicator of metabolic syndrome than other biomarkers and what is the optimal cut-off value of apoB/apoA1 ratio as an indicator of metaboli...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that negatively regulate target gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. Although recent studies have indicated that miR-146a is involved in the tumorigenesis of various types of malignancies, few studies have investigated its role in colorectal cancer. In the current study, we examined the expr...

Background Chemotherapy is essential for long-term survival of osteosarcoma patients. However, the impact of dosage and dosage intensity (DI) of chemotherapeutic agents on patients with high-grade osteosarcoma is largely unknown. Objective The object of this study was to evaluate the influence of these dosage-related variables on treatment outcome...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) negatively regulate gene expression and act as tumor suppressors or oncogenes in oncogenesis. The association between a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in miR-146a rs2910164 and susceptibility to digestive system cancers was inconsistent in previous studies. In this study, we conducted a literature search of PubMed to identi...

Upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) cancer is among the most frequent cancer and the most common death causes of cancer in the world. Epidemiological studies have reported an inconsistent relationship between alcohol drinking and UADT cancer mortality. However, no systematic review or meta-analysis has been reported up to now. To quantify the associat...

Accumulated evidence has indicated that Ephrin A1 (EFNA1) is associated with angiogenesis and tumorigenesis in various types of malignancies, including colorectal cancer (CRC). In the current study, we performed an online search using the public microarray database to investigate whether EFNA1 expression might be altered in CRC tissues. We then con...