BIBC 120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Prospective Cohort Study, Coronary Artery Disease, Longitudinal Study
Document Summary
How are nutritional questions studied: epidemiological studies: study of diseases in populations. Can lead to hypotheses and allow development of specific questions for testing and further examination: case-control studies: people with disease/syndrome compared to control groups and find difference between the groups. Best results emerging from the highest possible matching of confounding conditions between groups. Mini epidemiological": cross sectional studies: compare different population groups at a single point in time. Don"t observe past history, or future effects: longitudinal studies: observational. Famous prospective cohort study: nurses" health study (nhs: started in the late 70s, cohort: ~120,000 nurses between 30-45 years old, married (for sociocultural reasons) Initially examined the effects of birth control on women"s health, but gathered so much data, they expanded their studies. Showed that risk increased as bmi increased, allowing hypotheses to generate. How we test experimental questions: animal experiments: variety of well-characterized organisms can give high volume information about complex questions, ex: mice.
