Causal relationship between milk chocolate intake and calf pain: A Mendelian randomization analysis

This study aimed to examine the association between milk chocolate intake (MCI) and calf pain (CP). We acquired data from the MR Base database and used Mendelian randomization (MR) to evaluate the causal association between MCI and CP. We selected eight single nucleotide polymorphisms from genome-wide association studies that were significantly associated with both MCI and CP. Inverse weighted variance (IVW) and weighted median methods showed that MCI had a protective effect on CP (IVW: β = −0.360, odds ratio [OR] = 0.698, 95 % confidence interval [CI] = 0.502–0.969; Weighted median: β = −0.509, OR = 0.601, 95 %CI = 0.393–0.920). However, MR‐Egger analysis suggested no causal association (β = −0.315, OR = 0.729, 95 %CI = 0.231–2.299). The greater precision of weighted median estimator and IVW suggest our results may support a potential causal association between MCI and CP. The MR analysis demonstrated that MCI has a protective effect on CP.