Association between the Number of Days/Week of Different Levels of Physical Activity and Chronic Pain in People of Different Races: A Mendelian Randomization Study

• Published in: Journal of personalized medicine Vol. 14; no. 1; p. 50
• Main Authors: Luo, Sumei, Yang, Minjing, Yang, Haojun, Guo, Qulian, Wang, Yunjiao, Wang, E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 01.01.2024
• Subjects: African Americans; Alcohol; Back pain; Biobanks; Chronic illnesses; Chronic pain; Consortia; Exercise; Genome-wide association studies; genome-wide association study; Genomes; Genomics; Mendelian randomization; Mental depression; Minority & ethnic groups; Physical activity; Public health; race; Races; Sensitivity analysis; Single nucleotide polymorphisms; Single-nucleotide polymorphism; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomic status; South Asia; New Zealand; United Kingdom > UK; chronic pain; Mendelian randomization; race; genome-wide association study; physical activity
• ISSN: 2075-4426; 2075-4426
• DOI: 10.3390/jpm14010050

Regular physical activity is beneficial for health, but the effect of the number of days/week of physical activity on chronic pain (CP) remains unclear, so we used a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to explore the relationship between the number of days/weeks of different levels of physical activity and chronic pain in people of different races. We obtained summary data from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) on the number of days/week of physical activity and multisite chronic pain in European, South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and African American populations. The single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the exposed data were visualized with a Manhattan plot via the R program. MR analysis was performed by the MR-Base platform. The results indicated that a higher number of days/week with ≥10 min of walking protects against CP in African American and Afro-Caribbean populations (inverse-variance weighting, IVW < 0.05) but has little effect on people of different races (IVW > 0.05). A higher number of days/week with ≥10 min of moderate physical activity increased the risk of CP in European and South Asia (IVW < 0.05) but had little effect on people of different races (IVW > 0.05). The number of days/week of ≥10 min of vigorous physical activity increased the risk of CP in Europeans (IVW < 0.05) and protected against CP in African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans (IVW < 0.05). A higher number of days/week of moderate and vigorous physical activity increased the risk of CP in Europeans; however, a higher number of days/week of walking and vigorous physical activity may protect against CP in African American and Afro-Caribbean individuals.