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All sciences make mistakes, and epidemiology is no exception. I have chosen 7 illustrative mistakes and derived 7 solutions to avoid them. The mistakes (Roman numerals denoting solutions) are:
To date different vaginal gel microbicides have been evaluated in phase 2b/3 trials, but none have demonstrated effectiveness for preventing HIV infection. Failure to demonstrate effectiveness however does not...
West Nile virus (WNV) is currently the leading cause of arboviral-associated encephalitis in the U.S., and can lead to long-term neurologic sequelae. Improvements in dead bird specimen processing time, includi...
Instrumental variable (IV) methods have been used in econometrics for several decades now, but have only recently been introduced into the epidemiologic research frameworks. Similarly, Mendelian randomization ...
Comparing survival of patients with a single tumour and patients with multiple primaries poses different methodological problems. In population based studies, where we cannot rely on detailed clinical informat...
In medical practice, it is generally accepted that the 'effect model' describing the relationship between baseline risk and risk under treatment is linear, i.e. 'relative risk' is constant. Absolute benefit is...
Excess mortality due to seasonal influenza is thought to be substantial. However, influenza may often not be recognized as cause of death. Imputation methods are therefore required to assess the public health ...
Cluster surveys are commonly used in humanitarian emergencies to measure health and nutrition indicators. Deitchler et al. have proposed to use Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) hypothesis testing in cluster ...
Because common diseases are caused by complex interactions among many genetic variants along with environmental risk factors, very large sample sizes are usually needed to detect such effects in case-control s...
Systematic reviews based on the critical appraisal of observational and analytic studies on HIV prevalence and risk factors for HIV transmission among men having sex with men are very useful for health care de...
In 2002, Norway experienced a large outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in hospitals with 231 confirmed cases. This fuelled intense public and professional debates on what were the causes and who were r...
The thematic series 'Beyond English: Accessing the global epidemiological literature' in Emerging Themes in Epidemiology highlights the wealth of epidemiological and public health literature in the major language...
Chinese journals in epidemiology, preventive medicine and public health contain much that is of potential international interest. However, few non-Chinese speakers are acquainted with this literature. This art...
The economy of China continues to boom and so have its biomedical research and related publishing activities. Several so-called neglected tropical diseases that are most common in the developing world are stil...
It is well known that papers written in languages other than English have a great risk of being ignored simply because these languages are not accessible to the international scientific community. The objectiv...
There is a multiplicity of journals originating in Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (SSLAC) in the health sciences of relevance to the fields of epidemiology and publ...
Epidemiology and public health are usually context-specific. Journals published in different languages and countries play a role both as sources of data and as channels through which evidence is incorporated i...
In the 20th century, Russian biomedical science experienced a decline from the blossom of the early years to a drastic state. Through the first decades of the USSR, it was transformed to suit the ideological requ...
The study provides the rationale, history and current status of the Index Medicus for the World Health Organization Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Index is unique in combining the geographic coverage of pee...
Randomized trials are essential in assessing the effects of healthcare interventions and are a key component in systematic reviews of effectiveness. Searching for reports of randomized trials in databases is p...
Articles published in English language journals with citations of non-English peer reviewed materials are not very common today. However, as epidemiologists are becoming more aware of data and information bein...
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is severely affected by HIV/AIDS and conflict. Sexual violence as a weapon of war has been associated with concerns about heightened HIV incidence among women. Widespread rape by comba...
In 2004, Garcia-Berthou and Alcaraz published "Incongruence between test statistics and P values in medical papers," a critique of statistical errors that received a tremendous amount of attention. One of thei...
Only four out of 31 completed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of HIV prevention strategies against sexual transmission have shown significant efficacy. Poor adherence may have contributed to the lack of ef...
Cluster surveys are frequently used to measure key nutrition and health indicators in humanitarian emergencies. The survey design of 30 clusters of 7 children (30 × 7) was initially proposed by the World Healt...
The conventional method to collect data on the health, nutrition, and food security status of a population affected by an emergency is a 30 × 30 cluster survey. This sampling method can be time and resource in...
Tu et al present an analysis of the equivalence of three paradoxes, namely, Simpson's, Lord's, and the suppression phenomena. They conclude that all three simply reiterate the occurrence of a change in the associ...
Social epidemiologists have drawn attention to health inequalities as avoidable and inequitable, encouraging thinking beyond proximal risk factors to the causes of the causes. However, key debates remain unres...
Epidemiological studies often require measures of socio-economic position (SEP). The application of principal components analysis (PCA) to data on asset-ownership is one popular approach to household SEP measu...
This article discusses three statistical paradoxes that pervade epidemiological research: Simpson's paradox, Lord's paradox, and suppression. These paradoxes have important implications for the interpretation of ...
This editorial highlights the problem of language barrier in scientific communication in spite of the recent success of Open Access Movement. Four options for English-language journals to overcome the language...
The proportion of infant pertussis cases due to transmission from casual contact in the community has not been estimated since before the introduction of pertussis vaccines in the 1950s. This study aimed to es...
Environmental pollution as a cause of congenital anomalies is sometimes suspected because of clustering of anomalies in areas of higher exposure. This highlights questions around spatial heterogeneity (cluster...
Health surveys are a very important component of the epidemiology toolbox, and play a critical role in gauging population health, especially in developing countries. Research on health survey methods, however,...
Timely and accurate data are necessary to prioritise and effectively respond to humanitarian emergencies. 30-by-30 cluster surveys are commonly used in humanitarian emergencies because of their purported simpl...
In this paper we explore the strengths and gaps among NGO surveys based on an analysis of the records held in the CE-DAT database at CRED. We conclude by recommending the priority areas for strengthening NGO c...
Malnutrition prevalence and mortality rates are increasingly used as essential indicators to assess the severity of a crisis, to follow trends, and to guide decision-making, including allocation of funds. Alth...
Measuring rates and circumstances of population mortality (in particular crude and under-5 year mortality rates) is essential to evidence-based humanitarian relief interventions. Because prospective vital even...
In two-stage cluster surveys, the traditional method used in second-stage sampling (in which the first household in a cluster is selected) is time-consuming and may result in biased estimates of the indicator ...
Population size and density estimates are needed to plan resource requirements and plan health related interventions. Sampling frames are not always available necessitating surveys using non-standard household...
Geographical objectives and probabilistic methods are difficult to reconcile in a unique health survey. Probabilistic methods focus on individuals to provide estimates of a variable's prevalence with a certain...
Survey data are traditionally collected using pen-and-paper, with double data entry, comparison of entries and reconciliation of discrepancies before data cleaning can commence. We used Personal Digital Assist...
Accurate tools for assessing household wealth are essential for many health studies in developing countries. Household survey and participatory wealth ranking (PWR) are two approaches to generate data for this...
The study of inequities in health is a critical component of monitoring government obligations to uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Aotearoa/New Zealand the indigenous Māori population has a substant...
The incubation period of infectious diseases, the time from infection with a microorganism to onset of disease, is directly relevant to prevention and control. Since explicit models of the incubation period en...
An association between exposure to a risk factor and age-at-onset of disease may reflect an effect on the rate of disease occurrence or an acceleration of the disease process. The difference in age-at-onset ar...
A landmark randomised trial of male circumcision (MC) in Orange Farm, South Africa recently showed a large and significant reduction in risk of HIV infection, reporting MC effectiveness of 61% (95% CI: 34%–77%...
Public health research and practice is faced with three problems: 1) a focus on disease instead of health, 2) consideration of risk factor/disease relationships one at a time, and 3) attention to individuals w...
There are several reasons that someone might be diagnosed with more than one primary cancer. The aim of this analysis was to determine combinations of cancer types that occur more often than expected. The expe...
A rich and growing body of literature has emerged on ethics in epidemiologic research and public health practice. Recent articles have included conceptual frameworks of public health ethics and overviews of hi...
Emerging Themes in Epidemiology