Mendelian randomization
Article
Mendelian randomization is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 16, 2021 and October 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “the failed RCT and Mendelian randomization”; “Mendelian randomization suggests even small amounts of alcohol are harmful”. It most often appears alongside COVID, @literalbanana, ACX.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: February 16, 2021
- Last seen: October 14, 2021
Appears In
Related Pages
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- COVID (2 shared issues)
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- @literalbanana (1 shared issues)
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- ACX (1 shared issues)
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- Annweiler et al (1 shared issues)
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- Asians (1 shared issues)
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- Barcelona (1 shared issues)
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- Bay Area (1 shared issues)
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- behavioral econ (1 shared issues)
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- Bill Gates (1 shared issues)
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- Brazilian study (1 shared issues)
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- British (1 shared issues)
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- British colonial rule (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
One last study worth looking at: Butler-Laporte et al from Montreal. They use Mendelian randomization, a high-tech method that tries to get experiment-quality evidence from observational data by looking at genes directly. The idea is: you can't just measure whether people with low Vitamin D get COVID more, because that could be confounded by all sorts of things like whether sick people are more likely to stay indoors and get less sunlight or a thousand other things like that. So instead, you measure whether people with the genes for low Vitamin D get COVID more. We assume that people with the genes for low Vitamin D in fact have low Vitamin D. And this isn't confounded by anything; we know their low Vitamin D is genetic. So if these people get COVID more, we can be pretty sure that their COVID is caused by Vitamin D.
Inline links: Butler-Laporte et al from Montreal
This would explain the failed RCT and Mendelian randomization. But if it were true, we would expect to see more of a correlation in observational data - the people with more nitric oxide (or whatever) would be the people who get the most sunlight would be the people who have the most Vitamin D. So I don't think this really saves anything.
Does Vitamin D significantly decrease the risk of getting COVID?: 25% chance this is true. The Biobank and Mendelian randomization studies are strong arguments against this; the latitude, seasonal, and racial differences are only weak evidence in favor.
19: From the above, but deserving of its own highlight: Mendelian randomization suggests even small amounts of alcohol are harmful. That is, people with genes that predispose them to drink less alcohol have better cardiovascular health even at low levels of drinking. Since genes are harder to confound than most other things, this suggests that even light drinking is a bit bad for you. I’m slightly concerned that it’s based on a single variant but the sample size is large enough that I’ll provisionally trust it.