What is Mendelian Randomization and How Can it be Used as a Tool for Medicine and Public Health? Opportunities and Challenges

Precision Medicine and Population Health Webinar|Events|Genomics|CDC

Precision Medicine and Population Health Webinar

What is Mendelian Randomization and How Can it be Used as a Tool for Medicine and Public Health? Opportunities and Challenges

November 27, 2018, 3:00-4:00 pm ET
NCI, Shady Grove Campus

Free Online Webinar; Free Registration is required:  REGISTER HERE

Professor George Davey Smith
MA Oxon. MB B.Chir (Cantab), MSc (London), MD (Cantab), DSc (Oxon)and Professor of Clinical EpidemiologyBristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences
Bristol, United Kingdom

Dr. Davey Smith will give an overview of the field of Mendelian Randomization, and the opportunities it provides for assessing causal inference in medicine and public health, some of its methodologic limitations, as well as related approaches than can contribute to precision medicine and population health. He will use examples from cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other fields to illustrate this approach (40 minutes)

Discussion: This includes Q&As with speaker about his presentation. We will also focus on the future science agenda for Mendelian Randomization. (20 minutes)

Mendelian randomization is a method of using measured variation in genes of known function to examine the causal effect of a modifiable exposure on disease in observational studies. The design was first proposed in 1986 by Gray and Wheatley as a method for obtaining unbiased estimates of the effects of a putative causal variable without conducting a traditional randomised trial. These authors also coined the term Mendelian randomization. The design has a powerful control for reverse causationand confounding which otherwise bedevil epidemiological studies

Selected References

• A two minute primer on mendelian randomisation
  YouTube Video
• Mendelian randomization’: can genetic epidemiology contribute to understanding environmental determinants of disease?
  G Davey Smith, S Ebrahim, Int J Epidemiol 2003 Feb;32(1):1-22.
• Mendelian randomization
  CA Emdin et al, JAMA, Nov 21, 2017
• Mendelian Randomization: How the Natural Assortment of Genes Can Mimic Randomized Clinical Trials
  JAMA Podcast, Nov 21, 2017
• Mendelian Randomization Evidence for Cardiovascular Precision Medicine
  C O’Donnell, JAMA Cardiology, June 20, 2018
• Using genetic data to strengthen causal inference in observational research
  JB Pingault et al, Nat Rev Genetics, June 5, 2018
• Genetic epidemiology and Mendelian randomization for informing disease therapeutics: Conceptual and methodological challenges
  L Paternoster et al. PLoS Genetics 2017 Oct 13(10) e1006944
• Mendelian randomization: where are we now and where are we going?
  S Burgess et al. Int J Epidemiology 2015;44(2):379-388.
• Mendelian randomization in cardiometabolic disease: challenges in evaluating causality
  Holmes MV, Ala-Korpela M, Davey Smith G. Nature Reviews Cardiology 2017;14:577-590

Sponsors

• Precision Medicine and Population Health Interest Group, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
• Center for Translation Research and Implementation Science, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health
• Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention