Strength and limitations
NAFLD, anomalies, insomnia, MR, sleep traits
To our knowledge, this is the first bidirectional MR study that provides new insight into the causal associations between sleep traits and NAFLD. Our study has some strengths and limitations. The main advantage of this work is the use of bidirectional MR to explore the causal relationship between sleep traits and NAFLD, which can avoid reverse causality and potential false associations due to confounding factors. Second, all instrumental variables we used were from the publicly available GWAS with a large amount of data, avoiding bias due to anomalies in a few individuals, and none of our instrumental variables were affected by weak instrumental bias (F > 10). Also, we have tested our sensitivities using multiple methods to ensure that the IVs satisfy the core hypotheses and to obtain more robust results.One of our limitations, however, is that the sleep traits used in this study, particularly the trait of insomnia, do not indicate whether they are self-reported or the result of a clinical diagnosis, and there is some discrepancy between the two (