Assessing the Relationship between Gut Microbiota and Kidney Stones: A Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Analysis
Urology Journal,
Vol. 23 No. 00 (2026),
24 January 2026
,
Page 8573
https://doi.org/10.22037/uj.v23i00.8573
Abstract
Background There is increasing evidence that gut microbiota is associated with the risk of kidney stones diseases (KSD), but whether a causal relationship exists remains unclear. We used the Mendelian randomization (MR) method to assess the potential causal relationship between gut microbiota and KSD risk.
Methods Genetic tool variables for the gut microbiota were identified from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 18340 participants. Summary statistics for KSD were derived from GWAS, including 484,598 cases and 480,873 normal controls. We used the inverse variance weighting (IVW) method as the primary analysis method. To test the robustness of our results, we further performed the weighted-median method, MR-Egger regression, and MR pleiotropy residual sum and outlier test. Finally, reverse MR analysis was performed to evaluate the possibility of reverse causation.
Results We identified suggestive associations between four bacterial traits and the risk of KSD (odds ratio (OR): 0.82, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.69-0.98, p= 0.032 for class. Lentisphaeria； OR：0.79, 95% CI：0.66-0.96, p=0.018 for genus. Oscillibacter； OR：0.82, 95% CI：0.68-0.98, p=0.034 for order. Victivallales； OR：1.26, 95% CI：1.03-1.53, p=0.022 for genus. Olsenella). The results of sensitivity analyses for these bacterial traits were consistent. We did not find statistically significant associations between KSD and these four bacterial traits in the reverse MR analysis.
Conclusions Our systematic analysis provides evidence supporting a potential causal relationship between four gut microbiota taxa （including class. Lentisphaeria, genus. Oscillibacter, order. Victivallales and genus. Olsenella）and KSD risk. More studies are needed to demonstrate how gut microbiota influences KSD development.
- Kidney stone disease, Gut microbiota, Mendelian randomization, Single nucleotide polymorphism
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