Invited commentary: dietary pattern analysis.

Invited Commentary Invited Commentary: Dietary Pattern Analysis

The analytic approaches used in nutritional epidemiology for dietary pattern analyses share common characteristics with those of genetic epidemiology. In this issue of the Journal, Gorst-Rasmussen et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2011;173(10):1097–1104) discuss one such approach. Application of methods used in genetic pattern analyses to nutritional epidemiology could prove valuable but raises important...

Invited commentary: a further look at dietary questionnaire validation.

Invited commentary to the paper ‘Zinc status and its association with the health of adolescents: a review of studies in India’

We are pleased to view the article based on Dr. Rama Kawade's thesis illustrating the importance of micronutrient adequacy, especially zinc, and associated health implications in Indian adolescent girls. This brief commentary addresses three major aspects in which Kawade's work has made a significant contribution; nutrition and health issues of adolescents, rising importance of zinc in terms of...

Invited Commentary Invited Commentary: Dietary Fiber, Estradiol, and Cholesterol

The limitations of examining mediating factors by adjusting for them in standard regression models have been well-documented in the literature. Although alternative analytic models have been suggested, they are rarely used. In the accompanying article, Mumford et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2010;173(2):145–156) use marginal structural linear mixed models to determine the association between dietary fi...

Invited Commentary Invited Commentary: Coming Out of the Box

The authors apply the analogy of a ‘‘black box’’ from systems theory to epidemiologic problems. They highlight this process using the example of associations between sequential measures of body size and systolic blood pressure. Several other examples of the use of structural equation modeling or path analysis are described. Finally, the authors highlight several requirements for using these met...