I present some extensions of Bayesian methods to situations in which biases are of concern. First, a basic misclassification problem is illustrated using data from a study of sudden infant death syndrome. Bayesian analyses are then given. These analyses can be conducted directly, or by converting actual-data records to incomplete records and prior distributions to complete-data records, then ap...

The foregoing commentaries demonstrate wide differences between their authors’ choice of terms describing epidemiologic research designs, and in the relative importance they attach to directionality, timing, and sample selection. Nowhere is this more evident than in their discrepant definitions of “prospective” and “retrospective” studies. According to Drs Greenland and Morgenstern, “Prospectiv...

background: data on premature coronary artery disease (cad) are scarce. the tehran heart center's premature coronary atherosclerosis cohort study (thc-pac) is the first study of its kind in the middle east to assess major adverse cardiac events (mace) in young cad patients. methods: the cohort consists of cad patients, males ≤ 45 years old and females ≤ 55 years old. the participants are reside...

BACKGROUND A novel influenza A virus strain (H1N1-2009) spread first in Mexico and the United Stated in late April 2009, leading to the first influenza pandemic of the 21(st) century. The objective of this study was to determine the epidemiological and virological characteristics of the pandemic influenza A (H1N1-2009) in Zhanjiang, China. METHODS The case and outbreak reports of influenza-li...

BACKGROUND The counterfactual approach provides a clear and coherent framework to think about a variety of important concepts related to causation. Meanwhile, directed acyclic graphs have been used as causal diagrams in epidemiologic research to visually summarize hypothetical relations among variables of interest, providing a clear understanding of underlying causal structures of bias and effe...