Race has been identified as an important risk factor for the development of sepsis and as a predictor of poor outcomes in sepsis. For example, black individuals have been demonstrated to be nearly twice as likely to develop sepsis and to have greater mortality from sepsis than white individuals. Recent data from a longitudinal cohort, which examined incident hospitalizations for infections occu...

BACKGROUND Quantiles are a staple of epidemiologic research: in contemporary epidemiologic practice, continuous variables are typically categorized into tertiles, quartiles and quintiles as a means to illustrate the relationship between a continuous exposure and a binary outcome. DISCUSSION In this paper we argue that this approach is highly problematic and present several potential alternati...

Causal diagrams have a long history of informal use and, more recently, have undergone formal development for applications in expert systems and robotics. We provide an introduction to these developments and their use in epidemiologic research. Causal diagrams can provide a starting point for identifying variables that must be measured and controlled to obtain unconfounded effect estimates. The...

INTRODUCTION Dental caries is still a social problem in many countries, including Poland. Through epidemiological studies conducted in index groups among children and adults, it is possible to monitor its progress and take appropriate action. The Podlaskie region is an area where the severity of dental caries in children has been the highest in the country for a few years, both in urban and rur...

The ecologic study design is routinely used by epidemiologists in spite of its limitations. It is presently unknown how well the challenges of the design are dealt with in epidemiologic research. The purpose of this bibliometric review was to critically evaluate the characteristics, statistical methods, and reporting of results of modern cross-sectional ecologic papers. A search through 6 major...

Wenwu Yin and co-workers conducted a systematic review on challenges and needs to eliminate rabies in China (Yin et al., 2013 in this journal). Their analysis shows that there is considerable overrepresentation of laboratory and basic epidemiology research. On the other hand, information on effective control activities and policies are nearly absent. Currently we know enough to control and elim...

Prior epidemiologic research revealing cardioprotective effects of alcohol intake has systematically neglected lifetime exposure to alcohol, which may cause serious bias in conclusions regarding drinking and heart disease risk. Departing from use of an earlier interview schedule, the authors of the present 1996-2001 cohort study developed a self-administered Lifetime Drinking History questionna...

The development of new methods and approaches to dietary assessment has not kept pace with advances in related disciplines. One of the main gaps is the lack of innovation in incorporating cognitive psychology and computer game technology in developing useful, less biased tools for epidemiologic research on diet and disease. Another problem is the general lack of validation studies imbedded with...

The proportion of older people in the world population is expected to increase rapidly during the upcoming decades. Consequently, the number of patients with multimorbidity will increase dramatically. In epidemiologic research, the concepts of multimorbidity, comorbidity, and complications have been confusing, and some of these concepts are used interchangeably. In this commentary, the authors ...

BACKGROUND Several social indicators have been used in epidemiological research to describe socioeconomic position (SEP) of people in societies. Among SEP indicators, those more frequently used are education, occupational class and income. Differences in the incidence of several health outcomes have been reported consistently, independently from the indicator employed. Main objectives of the st...