Causal criteria in nutritional epidemiology

Causal webs in epidemiology

The notion of ̳causal web‘ emerged in the epidemiological literature in the early Sixties and had to wait until the Nineties for a thorough critical appraisal. Famously, Nancy Krieger argued that such a notion isn‘t helpful unless we specify what kind of spiders create the webs. This means, according to Krieger, (i) that the role of the spiders is to provide an explanation of the yarns of the w...

Nutritional epidemiology

Biomarkers in nutritional epidemiology.

OBJECTIVE To illustrate biomarkers of diet that can be used to validate estimates of dietary intake in the study of gene-environment interactions in complex diseases. DESIGN Prospective cohort studies, studies of biomarkers where diet is carefully controlled. SETTING Free-living individuals, volunteers in metabolic suites. SUBJECTS Male and female human volunteers. RESULTS Recent studie...

Nutritional Epidemiology

Causal diagrams in systems epidemiology

Methods of diagrammatic modelling have been greatly developed in the past two decades. Outside the context of infectious diseases, systematic use of diagrams in epidemiology has been mainly confined to the analysis of a single link: that between a disease outcome and its proximal determinant(s). Transmitted causes ("causes of causes") tend not to be systematically analysed.The infectious diseas...