We examined the causal direction between gut microbiota-dependent metabolite
trimethylamine N-oxide (
TMAO) or its predecessors and cardiometabolic diseases, such as risk of
type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM),
coronary artery disease (CAD),
myocardial infarction (MI),
stroke,
atrial fibrillation (AF), and
chronic kidney disease (CKD). We used genetic variants as instruments to test the causal associations. Genetically predicted higher
TMAO and
carnitine were not associated with higher odds of T2DM, AF, CAD, MI,
stroke, and CKD after Bonferroni correction (P ≤ 0.0005). However, we observed that genetically increased
choline showed a suggestive association with higher risk of T2DM (odds ratio 1.84 [95% CI 1.00-3.42] per 10 units, P = 0.05). In contrast, genetically predicted higher
betaine (0.68 [0.48-0.95] per 10 units, P = 0.023) was suggestively associated with a lower risk of T2DM. We observed a suggestive association of genetically increased
choline with a lower level of body fat percentage (β ± SE -0.28 ± 0.11, P = 0.013) but a higher estimated glomerular filtration rate (0.10 ± 0.05, P = 0.034). We further found that T2DM (0.130 ± 0.036, P < 0.0001) and CKD (0.483 ± 0.168, P = 0.004) were causally associated with higher
TMAO levels. Our Mendelian randomization findings support that T2DM and
kidney disease increase
TMAO levels and that observational evidence for
cardiovascular diseases may be due to confounding or reverse causality.