In the United States, obesity prevalence has surpassed alarming rates and reached epidemic proportions with increased body mass index poor diet being among top causes of morbidity mortality. Approximately 18.5% children in States have obesity. Childhood is associated medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, asthma musculoskeletal disorders other conditions. I...

Because many illnesses show heterogeneous response to treatment, there is increasing interest in individualizing treatment to patients [11]. An individualized treatment rule is a decision rule that recommends treatment according to patient characteristics. We consider the use of clinical trial data in the construction of an individualized treatment rule leading to highest mean response. This is...

The clinical benefit of the genomics revolution is particularly evident in oncology. Genetic characterization of patients’ tumors has revealed that cancer is fundamentally a heterogeneous disease whose complex clinical course can be correlated to specific molecular profiles. Now, genomic data and tools are beginning to be translated from the laboratory to the clinic where physicians and patient...

Cryptorchidism is a well-known congenital anomaly in children. However, its diagnosis is often delayed for reasons including patient unawareness or denial of abnormal findings in the testis. Moreover, it has been difficult to establish an optimal treatment strategy for postpubertal cryptorchidism, given the small number of patients. Unlike cryptorchidism in children, postpubertal cryptorchidism...

Individualized treatment rules, or rules for altering treatments over time in response to changes in individual covariates, are of primary importance in the practice of clinical medicine. Several statistical methods aim to estimate the rule, termed an optimal dynamic treatment regime, which will result in the best expected outcome in a population. In this article, we discuss estimation of an al...