Reply to 'The causal relationship between long-term exposure to ambient fine particulate matter and cognitive performance: Insights from Mendelian randomization'.

Li et al. [1] have commented on our recent paper investigating the association between exposure to fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) constituents and the risk of cognitive impairment [2]. They provided a Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) datasets from the European population, confirming a causal relationship between PM_2.5 exposure and cognitive performance. In our reply, we employed three causal inference models, including a generalized propensity score (GPS) adjusted Cox model, an inverse-probability weights (IPW) weighted Cox model, and a trimmed IPW-weighted Cox model, to confirm the relationship of PM_2.5 and cognitive impairment in our study cohort.