Does High Tobacco Consumption Cause Psychological Distress? A Mendelian Randomization Study

Increasing evidence suggests that smoking influences mental health negatively. This study investigated whether high tobacco consumption is causally related to psychological distress in a Mendelian randomization design, using a variant in the nicotine acetylcholine receptor gene CHRNA3—known to influence individual tobacco consumption—as instrumental variable for tobacco consumption. Data from 90 108 participants in the Copenhagen General...