Causation: An Epidemiologic Perspective (In Five Parts)

Causality and the Interpretation of Epidemiologic Evidence

There is an ongoing debate regarding how and when an agent's or determinant's impact can be interpreted as causation with respect to some target disease. The criteria of causation, originating from the seminal work of Sir Austin Bradford Hill and Mervyn Susser, are often schematically applied and, furthermore, there is a tendency to misinterpret the lack of evidence for causation as evidence fo...

Chlamydia pneumoniae and cardiovascular disease: an evolutionary perspective on infectious causation and antibiotic treatment.

Evolutionary considerations implicate infectious causation of atherosclerosis and help to resolve different risk factors as parts of an overall process of disease causation. An evolutionary approach also provides insight for the timing of research efforts to provide better control of pathogen evolution. In particular, evolutionary considerations emphasize the need to understand the transmissibi...

Epidemiology and the web of causation: has anyone seen the spider?

'Multiple causation' is the canon of contemporary epidemiology, and its metaphor and model is the 'web of causation.' First articulated in a 1960 U.S. epidemiology textbook, the 'web' remains a widely accepted but poorly elaborated model, reflecting in part the contemporary stress on epidemiologic methods over epidemiologic theories of disease causation. This essay discusses the origins, featur...

An Epidemiologic and Clinical Study of Snake Bites during a Five-Year Period in Karoon, Iran

Redundant causation from a sufficient cause perspective

Sufficient causes of disease are redundant when an individual acquires the components of two or more sufficient causes. In this circumstance, the individual still would have become diseased even if one of the sufficient causes had not been acquired. In the context of a study, when any individuals acquire components of more than one sufficient cause over the observation period, the etiologic eff...