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. 2023 Jul 19;18(7):e0287810. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287810

Physical activity, sedentary behavior and pancreatitis risk: Mendelian randomization study

Ruiqi Ling 1, Juan Liang 2, Shaojian Mo 1, Jiabao Qi 1, Xifeng Fu 1, Yanzhang Tian 1,*
Editor: Zulkarnain Jaafar3
PMCID: PMC10355380  PMID: 37467250

Abstract

Background

Although observational studies have shown that physical activity is a protective factor for acute pancreatitis, the causal associations between PA/ sedentary behavior and acute pancreatitis (AP) and chronic pancreatitis (CP) remain unclear.

Methods

We used Mendelian randomization as a strategy to assess the causalities between exposures and outcomes by simulating randomized experiments with genetic variation. The collected genetic variants data of physical activity were from UK Biobank, the data on sedentary behavior were also from UK Biobank, and both of them could be found in the GWAS catalog, and the data on AP and CP were from FinnGen. There were three physical activity related activity patterns (moderate to vigorous physical activity [MVPA], accelerometer-based physical activity with average acceleration, [AccAve] and accelerometer-based physical activity with accelerations >425 milli-gravities, [Acc425]) and three sedentary behavior-related lifestyle patterns (Leisure screen time [LST], Sedentary commuting, Sedentary behavior at work). We used inverse variance weighted (IVW), weighted median and MR-Egger for the analysis of Mendelian randomization, followed by sensitivity tests with the Cochran Q test, MR-Egger intercepts analysis and MR-PRESSO.

Results

A causal relationship was found between LST and acute pancreatitis based on IVW analysis (odds ratios [OR] = 1.38, corresponding 95% confidence intervals [CI] = 1.16–1.64, p = 0.0002) and there were no causal relationships between physical activity/sedentary behavior and chronic pancreatitis. Sensitivity analysis showed no pleiotropy and heterogeneity of the results.

Conclusions

Results show that reducing LST contributes to the prevention of acute pancreatitis, thereby reducing the health burden associated with it.

Introduction

Physical activity is a vital part of people’s lives and is closely related to healthy [1]. Along with lifestyle and working changes, physical activity is gradually decreasing and other insalubrious lifestyles such as sedentary behavior are increasing. The rapid global movement of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has further aggravated this problem [2]. New evidence has been shown physical activity helps prevent tumors [3], diabetes [4], cardiovascular disease [5], mental disorders [6] and other diseases [7]. Sedentary behavior is characterized by low energy expenditure activities (metabolic equivalents [METs] < 2.0), mostly in a sitting or supine position [8]. It has been confirmed to be a risk factor for obesity [9], autoimmune disease [10] and cancer [11], which has become a health burden and even influence mortality [12].

AP is the most common Gastrointestinal emergency in advanced countries [13]. The course of acute pancreatitis is difficult to predict despite various assessment criteria [14]. Although with the diversification of treatments, approximately 20% of patients develop moderate to severe cases and even die [13]. More than 3% of cases of acute pancreatitis progress to chronic pancreatitis within 3–8 years [15]. CP is a fibroinflammatory syndrome of the exocrine pancreas. With increasing pain, leading to diabetes and a higher risk of cancer, chronic pancreatitis greatly deteriorates life quality [15, 16]. In order to reduce the health burden of pancreatitis, early prevention is essential. Smoking and alcohol consumption are recognized as important risk factors for both acute and chronic pancreatitis. Reducing tobacco and alcohol intake is one of the key preventive measures for lowering the risk of pancreatitis [17]. A recent observational study suggests that increasing the frequency of physical activity reduces the risk of acute pancreatitis and is not related to whether physical activity is occupationally related [18]. Physical activity may modulate the endocrine effects of the pancreas, thereby reducing the risk of pancreatitis [19]. However, there is still a void regarding the causal relationship between physical activity/sedentary behavior and pancreatitis.

Mendelian randomization (MR) is an important strategy to demonstrate causality between exposure and outcome [20]. Instrumental variables used by MR to evaluate exposure-outcome relationships is genetic variants, Statistical methods for minimizing the impact of confounders [21]. Genetic variations also influence the development of pancreatitis. At conception, genetic variants are randomly assigned and are not subject to disease progression, so reverse causality can be largely avoided [22]. The evidence level of randomized controlled trials (RCT) is highest in evidence-based medicine, but for ethical and economic reasons, RCT is generally feasible [23]. In the absence of RCT, MR has a higher level of evidence than observational studies. The purpose of this study was to reveal whether physical activity/sedentary behavior is causally related to pancreatitis based on the results of two samples of MR scanning.

Methods

Data sources

Instrumental variable selection data

The AP genome-wide association study (GWAS) data which has more than 377,000 participants was from UK Biobank [24]. Three of phenotypes were selected, including moderate to MVPA, AccAve and Acc425. A questionnaire that refers to the international physical activity questionnaire (August 2002 version) was used to assess the physical activity, those moderate and high activity groups were classified into MVPA (N = 377,324) [24, 25]. Accelerometer-based physical activity required participants to wear an Axivity AX3 accelerometer for at least 72h in a week [26]. There are two categories of data measured from accelerometer which were classified as AccAve (N = 91,084) and Acc425 (N = 90,667) [24]. GWAS data for sedentary behavior were referenced from a recent high-quality meta-analysis that included GWAS data from 51 studies in which we selected data on sedentary behavior of European ancestry [27]. The phenotypes were classified as LST (N = 526,725), Sedentary commuting (N = 159,606), Sedentary behavior at work (N = 372,609). Detailed definitions of the three phenotypes can be found from the supplementary data in Zhe Wang study [27]. The data can be found on GWAS catalog (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/).

Data sources for acute and chronic pancreatitis

The acute/chronic pancreatitis datasets we used are from FinnGen (https://r8.finngen.fi/), all data were updated in December 2022. The reason we used FinnGen datasets is to rule out the possibility of overlapping samples which may cause Sample overlap bias. There are 5,509 cases and 301,383 controls in the statistics of acute pancreatitis data. We also collected 3,002 cases and 301,383 controls for chronic pancreatitis, all participants own ancestry of European.

Study design

Exposure related single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were used as IVs in MR study (Fig 1). To perform MR analysis, three assumptions must be met by IVs (Fig 2): 1. There is a strong association between exposure and SNPs; 2. There should be no association between SNPs and potential confounders 3. SNPs have something to do with outcome only through exposure [20]. SNPs that were significantly (P < 5 × 10−8) associated with physical activity/sedentary behavior were selected, after we clumped these SNPs in linkage disequilibrium (LD, Clumping window: 10000kb, Clumping r2 cutoff: 0.001) and used Pheno Scanner V2 (http://www.phenoscanner.medschl.cam.ac.uk/) to eliminate confounding SNPs (smoking and alcohol use related). Smoking and alcohol use are confounding factors, and if the selected instrumental variables are associated with them, the study would not meet the second assumption of Mendelian randomization (MR). Therefore, it is important to exclude SNPs that are associated with smoking and alcohol use to avoid confounding factors affecting the causal relationship. For phenotypes with fewer than 3 SNPs, we rescreened with a relaxed P value of less than 5 × 10−7, all other screening conditions unchanged [28]. The final SNPs of MVPA, AccAve, Acc425, LST, Sedentary commuting and Sedentary behavior at work are 16, 7, 4, 92, 3, 6 and all SNPs F-statistics >10 (The S1-S6 Tables in S1 Appendix provides details about SNPs).

Fig 1. The process of instrumental variable selection and study design.

Fig 1

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IVs: Instrumental variables; MVPA: moderate to vigorous physical activity; AccAve: accelerometer-based physical activity (average acceleration); Acc425: accelerometer-based physical activity (fraction of time with accelerations >425 milli-gravities); LST: leisure screen time; AP: acute pancreatitis; CP: chronic pancreatitis.

Fig 2. Instrumental variables fit the assumptions of MR.

Fig 2

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SNPs: single-nucleotide polymorphisms.

Mendelian randomization and sensitivity analysis

The causal effects of physical activity/sedentary behaviors on AP and CP were analyzed by IVW method, weighted median with MR-Egger was used as a supplement. If there were no heterogeneity and pleiotropy in IVs, the fixed-effects model analysis using IVW was the most accurate, but when heterogeneity was present, the random-effects model of IVW or methods of weighted median is preferred. In addition, It is suggested to use MR-Egger analysis instead of IVW and weighted median in the case of pleiotropy of SNPs [29]. Cochran Q test was performed to test for heterogeneity and the funnel plot is used as a supplement. If instrumental variables exert a direct effect on the outcome independent of the exposure factor, it violates the fundamental principle of Mendelian randomization and suggests the presence of horizontal pleiotropy. To avoid potential biases arising from the presence of horizontal pleiotropy in causal relationships, we employ MR-Egger intercept analysis to assess the horizontal pleiotropy in MR results. MR pleiotropy residual sum and outlier (MR-PRESSO) was conducted for assessing vertical pleiotropy and detection of biased SNPs (p < 0.05). MR-PRESSO was not feasible when there were less than or equal to three SNPs. For the presence of biased SNPs, MR and sensitivity analysis were repeated after excluding bias. At last, leave one out analysis was used to assess the robustness of the analysis results [30].

Statistical analysis

All statistical analyses were performed in R 4.2.2 using the R package TwoSampleMR (version 0.5.6). Because multiple independent analyses were performed, the P value (p < 0.0083: 0.05/6) after Bonferroni correction was used as the criterion for significance. The results of MR Analysis were shown in odds ratios (OR) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI). Statistical power was calculated using mRnd(https://shiny.cnsgenomics.com/mRnd/)

Ethics statement

All the data comes from online databases, The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Results

Physical activity/sedentary behavior and AP

Inverse variance weighted (IVW) Analysis showed that only LST had a causal relationship with acute pancreatitis (OR = 1.38, 95CI% = 1.16–1.64, p = 0.0002) and the statistical power was 0.99. Two other sedentary behavior-related phenotypes have been shown to reduce the risk of AP(Fig 3). Other outcomes indicated that all three indicators of physical activity reduced the risk of acute pancreatitis but without causal collections. (MVPA: OR = 0.45, 95CI% = 0.19–1.06, p = 0.0682; AccAve: OR = 0.96, 95CI% = 0.89–1.03, p = 0.2737; Acc425: 0.40, 95CI% = 0.14–1.18, p = 0.0980). The results of weighted median and MR-Egger were listed in S7 Table (S1 Appendix).

Fig 3. Causal effects of physical activity/sedentary behavior on acute pancreatitis by IVW.

Fig 3

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MVPA: moderate to vigorous physical activity; AccAve: accelerometer-based physical activity (average acceleration); Acc425: accelerometer-based physical activity (fraction of time with accelerations >425 milli-gravities); LST: leisure screen time; IVW: inverse variance weighted.

Physical activity/sedentary behavior and CP

In total, neither the indicators of physical activity nor sedentary behavior were causally linked to CP. MVPA, AccAve and Acc425 play active roles for prevention of CP in IVW analysis (Fig 4). LST and Sedentary commuting increased the risk of CP but Sedentary behavior at work reduced the risk. Weighted median and MR-Egge results also can be found in S7 Table (S1 Appendix).

Fig 4. Causal effects of physical activity /sedentary behavior on acute pancreatitis by IVW.

Fig 4

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MVPA: moderate to vigorous physical activity; AccAve: accelerometer-based physical activity (average acceleration); Acc425: accelerometer-based physical activity (fraction of time with accelerations >425 milli-gravities); LST: leisure screen time; IVW: inverse variance weighted.

Sensitivity analyses

To further evaluate the results’ precision, sensitivity analyses, including MR-Egger intercept analysis, Cochran Q test, and MR-PRESSO global test, were conducted. MR-Egger intercept and MR-PRESSO analysis indicated that the pleiotropy of result of LST to AP/CP doesn’t exist (Fig 5) and we can draw robust conclusions after examining (S1 Fig). In other results, there was no horizontal pleiotropy since all MR-Egger intercepts were p > 0.05. The results of Cochran Q test indicated the heterogeneity of results when studying the relationship between AccAve and CP (Q = 15.15, p = 0.02) and MR-PRESSO shwon rs34517439 biased the results. After we eliminated rs34517439, we re-performed MR Analysis and sensitivity analysis of AccAve and CP. This time, Cochran Q test (Q = 6.66, p = 0.25) and MR-PRESSO global test (p = 0.28) shown that there is no heterogeneity in the results. There was no either heterogeneity nor pleiotropy in the other results (Table 1).

Fig 5. Sensitivity analyses of MR results about LST to acute/chronic pancreatitis.

Fig 5

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a, b: Scatter plots and funnel plots show genetically predicted of LST on acute pancreatitis; c, d: genetically predicted LST on chronic pancreatitis. LST: Leisure screen time.

Table 1. Sensitivity analysis of the causal association between physical activity/sedentary behavior and the risk of AP/CP.

Exposure Outcome MR-Egger Cochran Q test MR-PRESSO
Intercept p Q value P p
MVPA AP 0.04 0.38 20.44 0.16 0.17
CP -0.03 0.54 19.39 0.20 0.20
AccAve AP -0.06 0.21 4.06 0.67 0.68
CP -0.06 0.44 6.66 0.25 0.28
Acc425 AP -0.59 0.18 4.82 0.19 0.27
CP -0.32 0.50 1.00 0.80 0.77
LST AP -0.002 0.85 86.47 0.61 0.62
CP 0.01 0.53 99.67 0.25 0.25
Sedentary commuting AP 0.02 0.86 0.29 0.86 -
CP -0.02 0.91 0.47 0.79 -
Sedentary behavior at work AP -0.03 0.46 3.62 0.61 0.63
CP -0.04 0.43 3.50 0.62 0.67
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MVPA: moderate to vigorous physical activity; AccAve: accelerometer-based physical activity (average acceleration); Acc425: accelerometer-based physical activity (fraction of time with accelerations >425 milli-gravities); LST: leisure screen time; AP: acute pancreatitis; CP: chronic pancreatitis.

Discussion

To date, no studies have investigated the causal relationship between physical activity/sedentary behavior and AP/CP.

Physical activity and sedentary behavior are the two most common lifestyle habits of people. As people pay more attention to health, research on physical activity and sedentary behavior has exploded in recent years. Although latest studies have identified that physical activity/sedentary behavior is associated with cancer [31], various chronic diseases, and even some studies have shown that sedentary behavior can increase the severity of COVID-19 and the probability of hospitalization. However, studies on their association with gastrointestinal diseases are still scarce.

Pancreatitis is one of the most common gastrointestinal diseases. There was a reduction in the risk of AP among physical activity participants in a large observational study in China. Observational studies, however, are susceptible to confounding factors and reverse causality, and Asian findings may not generalize to European populations. There are even fewer studies on physical activity/sedentary behavior and CP, and these research directions have focused on influence of prognosis. It is still difficult for patients with acute pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis to have a good quality of life during their illness, despite major improvements in treatment. Therefore, the prevention of pancreatitis is important and understanding the protective and risk factors of pancreatitis is urgent.

It was our study that first demonstrated causally that LST increases AP risk. It may caused by following reasons. Firstly, LST people often have abnormal eating habits, they usually don’t have a habit of breakfast and the intake of vitamin and dietary fiber in the diet is low, fat composition is relatively high [32].These irregular eating habits can induce the formation of gallstones [33] and gallstones is the most common trigger of AP in advanced countries [34]. Secondly, A recent Mendelian randomization study has demonstrated that LST increases the risk of type 2 diabetes causally [35]. Dipeptidylpeptidase-4 (DPP4) inhibitors and Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RAs) are important treatments for T2D.These medicines may increase the risk of pancreatitis [36, 37]. Last but not least, sedentary behavior will increase risk of autoimmune disease [10] which also a risk factor for AP in European populations [13]. In our study, it was indeed not shown that physical activity would affect AP/CP. This contradicts the findings of previous observational study [18]. We speculate that this may caused by people who exercise regularly will have less bad lifestyle habits such as smoking and drinking. Smoking and drinking are risk factors for pancreatitis which cause the bias [16]. Qilin Qian’s study confirmed that physical activity reduces the risk of gallstone disease [38],which may cause bias of observational study.

We used SNPs instead of exposure to investigate the causal relationship between exposures and outcomes. Compared with observational studies, this strategy can effectively avoid interference of confounders and reverse causality. In the selection of GWAS data, we selected data with European ancestry, which can largely avoid the bias caused by different races. Different databases were used for the selection of GWAS data for exposures and outcomes to avoid bias due to overlapping samples. Our results have clinical implications, and reducing LST can effectively reduce the risk of AP, thereby reducing the health burden of European countries.

However, our study still has some limitations. In the first place, because all GWAS data were derived from participants of European ancestry, our results only apply to European populations and cannot be generalized to all humans. Moreover, detailed disease information was not available for participants in the course of the GWAS data collection, stratified analyses could not be performed and it is not possible to infer whether physical activity/sedentary behavior has a causal link to disease severity in pancreatitis either. In addition, except for the MR estimates of LST and AP, the statistical power of the other MR Analysis results was low which may lead to false negative results.

All in all, there are no causal relationship between physical activity and pancreatitis. It’s LST rather than sedentary behavior increase the risk of AP causally but it has no causal connection with CP. This suggests that reducing the amount of time spent on electronics may reduce the risk of acute pancreatitis.

Supporting information

S1 Appendix. S1-S7 Tables are included in file.

(XLS)

Click here for additional data file. (48KB, xls)
S1 Fig

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file. (602.6KB, docx)

Acknowledgments

We thank all participants and investigators of the UK Biobank and the FinnGen study.

Data Availability

All the data comes from online databases, The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. All data can be found in the Data sources section of the paper or Supporting Information as well as links to the data.

Funding Statement

Our research received funding from the Shanxi Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security (grant no. 20210002) and the Shanxi Provincial Department of Science and Technology (grant no. 202104041101024). There was no additional external funding received for this study. Furthermore, we would like to clarify that the funders had no involvement in the study design, data collection, and analysis.

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Decision Letter 0

Zulkarnain Jaafar

19 May 2023

PONE-D-23-04358physical activity, sedentary behavior and pancreatitis risk: Mendelian randomization studyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr.Tian,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

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==============================

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PLOS ONE

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1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: My dear authors ;

Many thanks for great work and discuss very important risk factors like sendenttary life or physical activity

the strenght points :

1- The strength of the present study is the MR design, which minimized bias from

confounding and reverse causality and use many sensitivity analyses to avoid bias

whats expectations from authors

1- how to calculate sample size in the study

2- whats number of instruments is used for MVPA as small number may affect on the power of study

3- please write about Pleitropic effects of smoking and alcohol consumption and data sources as paragraph

4- whats about the effect of horizanatal pleiotropic on bias

5- you use three indicators for sedentary behaviour and three indicators for physical activity

6- at conclusion please write about the linking between physcial activity and AP and CP is determined or not

7- Are individuals of the UK Biobank were included in both the exposure and outcome datasets as this potential limitation which might introduce some bias in the causal estimates in the direction of the estimates of observational studies

8- you should give titles regarding the data sources as following :

*instrumentalvariable selection data

*data sources for acute and chronic pancreatitis

*data for smoking and drinking alcohol

9- why no figure shown illustating the study design and Study design to explain easily for the readers

10- why use abbreviation for physical activity i think not good this abbreviations as not specific

Reviewer #2: This study is interesting. However, there are still some parts to be improved such as the figure 4 presentation (blurred), punctuation, and abstract writing.

1. Please enhance the result section in abstract with other important findings.

2. line 68-69 In which working system in the body the PA could reduce the risk for AP? Please explore this explanation in this paragraph concisely.

3. line 73 Do the genetic variants are chosen based on the genetic that involve in the pancreatitis development?

4. line 87 Mention the name of the questionnaire used in this study

5. line 221-222 Why author did not use the dietary intake data of each subject to be one of their co-variables?

6. line 251 Delete the dot (.)

7. line 252-254 Please add one sentence to inform the public recommendation based on the study findings.

**********

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Arif Sabta Aji

**********

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Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-04358_reviewer_Comments.pdf

Click here for additional data file. (1.6MB, pdf)
PLoS One. 2023 Jul 19;18(7):e0287810. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287810.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

25 May 2023

Dear academic editor and reviewers,

Thank you very much for your comments and professional advice These opinions help to improve the academic rigor of our article Based on your suggestion and request we have made corrected modifications to the revised manuscript. We hope that our work can be improved again Furthermore, we would like to show the details as follows:

Academic editor:

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match.

When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section.

3. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript.

4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

5.Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

The author's answer:

1.We have followed the magazine's requirements for the author information and title format in the manuscript and deleted other unnecessary sections to make sure that our manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements.

2.2.We kindly request to modify our financial disclosure statement. Our research received funding from the Shanxi Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security (grant no. 20210002) and the Shanxi Provincial Department of Science and Technology (grant no. 202104041101024). The funding agency is represented by the abbreviation YT. Furthermore, we would like to clarify that the funders had no involvement in the study design, data collection, and analysis.

3.We have moved the ethics statement to the Methods section and deleted it from other section

4.We have added Supporting Information files at the end of oour manuscript and updated any in-text citations to match accordingly

5.We added a reference, which is the 19th reference in the full text, to add the rationale for our study. The reference list is complete and correct. We have not cited papers that have been retracted

Reviewer #1:

1- how to calculate sample size in the study

2- whats number of instruments is used for MVPA as small number may affect on the power of study

3- please write about Pleitropic effects of smoking and alcohol consumption and data sources as paragraph

4- whats about the effect of horizanatal pleiotropic on bias

5- you use three indicators for sedentary behaviour and three indicators for physical activity

6- at conclusion please write about the linking between physcial activity and AP and CP is determined or not

7- Are individuals of the UK Biobank were included in both the exposure and outcome datasets as this potential limitation which might introduce some bias in the causal estimates in the direction of the estimates of observational studies

8- you should give titles regarding the data sources as following :

*instrumentalvariable selection data

*data sources for acute and chronic pancreatitis

*data for smoking and drinking alcohol

9- why no figure shown illustating the study design and Study design to explain easily for the readers

10- why use abbreviation for physical activity i think not good this abbreviations as not specific

The author's answer:

1: We use data from UK Biobank and FinnGen as our sources. The sample size in the database remains constant, and in order to achieve greater statistical power, we have included all eligible data that meets the criteria. The calculation of sample size and statistical power is performed using the website https://shiny.cnsgenomics.com/mRnd/. (page5 section of Instrumental variable selection data)

2: The number of instrumental variables (IVs) we have selected for MVPA is 16, which were carefully screened through strict selection steps. This quantity is not small and is similar to the number of MVPA experiments used as instruments in previous Mendelian randomization studies. However, as our outcome differs from those studies, there may be slight variations in the number of instrumental variables used. The statistical power we calculated of MVPA to acute/chronic pancreatitis were 0.32 and 0.12(page6 line 126-128)

3: Smoking and alcohol use are confounding factors, and if the selected instrumental variables are associated with them, the study would not meet the second assumption of Mendelian randomization (MR). Therefore, it is important to exclude SNPs that are associated with smoking and alcohol use to avoid confounding factors affecting the causal relationship. They only play confounding roles, so the data on smoking and alcohol use is unnecessary.(page 3 line 63-65)

4. we have added the effect of horizontal pleiotropic on bias(page7 line 142-147)

5: Regarding the selection of three phenotypes related to physical activity and sedentary behavior, we referred to all relevant GWAS and Mendelian randomization studies. We chose the three phenotypes that were most frequently used and representative in these studies as indicators for our analysis(page 5 line89-92)

6: physical activity has no causal relationship with acute/chronic pancreatitis, which we have added in the paper.(page8 line169-171)

7: the exposure date came from UK biobank and the outcome date was from FinnGen, They came from different countries so there was no bias due to sample overlap.(page2 line24-27)

8: we have reversed titles regarding the data sources, but the data didn't include data for smoking and drinking alcohol. Smoking and drinking alcohol only play confounding roles. And we ticked out the SNPs associated with them to make sure our MR won't be interfered by confounders.(page4-5 section of data sources)

9: We have added a figure(Fig 1) illustrating the study design and Study design to explain easily to the readers(page6 line131)

10: this abbreviation was not specific, so we have canceled the abbreviate physical to PA.

Reviewer #2:

This study is interesting. However, there are still some parts to be improved such as the figure 4 presentation (blurred), punctuation, and abstract writing.

1. Please enhance the result section in abstract with other important findings.

2. line 68-69 In which working system in the body the PA could reduce the risk for AP? Please explore this explanation in this paragraph concisely.

3. line 73 Do the genetic variants are chosen based on the genetic that involve in the pancreatitis development?

4. line 87 Mention the name of the questionnaire used in this study

5. line 221-222 Why author did not use the dietary intake data of each subject to be one of their co-variables?

6. line 251 Delete the dot (.)

7. line 252-254 Please add one sentence to inform the public recommendation based on the study findings.

The author's answer:

We have adjusted our picture4 to make it won’t blur(We added an additional figure, so Figure 4 is now referred to as Figure 5.)

1: We have enhanced the result section in the abstract by adding the relationship between physical activity/sedentary behavior and chronic pancreatitis.(page2 line 35-39)

2: Physical activity may modulate the endocrine effects of the pancreas, thereby reducing the risk of pancreatitis.(page 4 line 68-69)

3: Genetic variations also influence the development of pancreatitis.(page 4 line 75-76)

4: The questionnaire referred to is the international physical activity questionnaire (August 2002 version)(page5 89-92)

5: There are 2 reasons to explain why we didn't use the dietary intake data of each subject to be one of their co-variables (page12 line 240-242)

1. the data we collected do not have the dietary intake data. The database builders did not consider the collection of this part of the data.

2. The SNPs selected as the instrument variable do not have connections with dietary intake.

6: We have deleted the dot (.)(page13 line 271-273)

7: We have added one sentence to inform the public recommendation based on the study findings.(page13 line 275-276)

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file. (17.1KB, docx)

Decision Letter 1

Zulkarnain Jaafar

13 Jun 2023

physical activity, sedentary behavior and pancreatitis risk: Mendelian randomization study

PONE-D-23-04358R1

Dear Dr. Tian,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Zulkarnain Jaafar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: My dear authors all comments have been addressd

Many thanks for big efforts but at answers for reviewers the uthor remembered the magazine requirments so it is better to called journal not magazine

Reviewer #2: Authors have already revised all the comment. We suggest to continue the process and accept this manuscript.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Amr ahmed

Reviewer #2: Yes: Arif Sabta Aji

**********

Acceptance letter

Zulkarnain Jaafar

11 Jul 2023

PONE-D-23-04358R1

Physical activity, sedentary behavior and pancreatitis risk: Mendelian randomization study

Dear Dr. Tian:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Zulkarnain Jaafar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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    All the data comes from online databases, The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. All data can be found in the Data sources section of the paper or Supporting Information as well as links to the data.

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