Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2018 Dec 18;9:662. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2018.00662

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

Copyright © 2018 Luo, An, Jia, Yue, Zheng, Liu, Chen, An, Winkler and Duan.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

PMC Copyright notice

Application of the Mendelian randomization framework in assessing causal role of bilirubin in NAFLD. According to the Mendelian randomization framework, if a genetic variant (UGT1A1) reliably governs a disease risk factor (Bilirubin), and there is a causal association between the risk factor (Bilirubin) and disease end-point (NAFLD), then the genetic variant (UGT1A1) should itself be associated with the disease end-point (NAFLD). Confounding factors, such as socio-demographic and disease status may affect the total bilirubin levels and the risk of NAFLD by modulate other biological pathways, but do not affect the random distribution of UGT1A1*6 and UGT1A1*28 variants. UGT1A1*6 and UGT1A1*28 were also not in linkage disequilibrium with known genes (e.g., PNPLA3 and TM6SF2) that predispose to NAFLD.