Culture and causal inference: the impact of cultural differences on the generalisability of findings from Mendelian randomisation studies

Campbell, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9171-6519, Munafò, MR ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4049-993X, Sallis, HM ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4793-6290, Pearson, RM ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8527-3400 and Smith, D ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6467-2023 (2022) Culture and causal inference: the impact of cultural differences on the generalisability of findings from Mendelian randomisation studies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45. e158. ISSN 0140-525X

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Abstract

Cultural effects can influence the results of causal genetic analyses, such as Mendelian randomisation, but the potential influences of culture on genotype-phenotype associations are not currently well understood. Different genetic variants could be associated with different phenotypes in different populations, or culture could confound or influence the direction of the association between genotypes and phenotypes in different populations.