The Next Step Forward Is to Take a Step Back

The Next Step Forward Is to Take a Step Back.

Understanding the causes of diabetes is at the heart of most diabetes research. The field of causal inference has made dramatic advances in methodology that allows for causal inference from observational and not experimental data (1). One such methodological advancement is the use of genetic markers as instrumental variables, or so-called Mendelian randomization (MR) (2). MR relies on the laws ...

Complex trait locus linkage mapping in atherosclerosis: time to take a step back before moving forward?

E ver since the initial proposal to use polymorphic DNA markers to map genetic diseases,1 linkage analysis (also called “positional cloning”) has been used successfully to find the gene defects for hundreds of monogenic Mendelian traits.2 Because monogenic diseases can serve as important models for understanding pathogenesis, especially if they point to novel biochemical and physiological pathw...

Malaria Prevention during Pregnancy—Is There a Next Step Forward?

The malaria parasite lives most of its life and does the majority of its replication in red blood cells. The biologically and immunologically unique utero-placental blood space (where the mother’s body must recognize the fetus as not-self and then accept and nurture this foreign body) serves as a near-perfect protected resting and reproducing place for malaria-infected red blood cells–a ‘‘holid...

One step forward

Psychiatry Investigation : The Next Step Forward

Psychiatry Investigation (PI) has been published biannually since August 2004 as an official English journal of the Korean Neuropsychiatric Association (KNPA) for the purpose of dealing with unique regional psychiatric issues. Under the leadership of the KNPA president Prof. Yong Sik Kim, Prof. Byoung-Hoon Oh became the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal. Launching on a new English journal...