Dear all,

The next seminar in our series of statistics talks for people interested in quantitative methods in biology and medicine will take place on Thursday 29 March 2018 at 11:00, in the Salle Delachaux (Biopôle 2, first floor, Route de la Corniche 10, 1010 Lausanne, M2: Vennes).

The speaker will be the Dr. Jack Bowden from the “Bristol Population Health  Science Institute” and the “Bristol Medical School” of the University of Bristol, UK.

Title: Recent advances in two-sample summary data Mendelian randomization

Abstract: The explosion in publicly available data from genome-wide association studies is accelerating the use of Mendelian randomization in epidemiology. Summary data estimates of genetic association from large numbers of variants are now being synthesized to yield causal estimates within the framework of a meta-analysis.  In a short time, the field has seen a dramatic rise in the power for testing causal hypotheses. There is a justified concern that when large numbers of genetic variants are included in a Mendelian randomization analyses, with many lacking a firm biological basis for their association with the exposure, a sizeable proportion of these variants are likely to be invalid instrumental variables. Specifically, there is a real danger that many variants will exert pleiotropic effects on the outcome not through the exposure of interest, thus biasing the analysis and leading to incorrect inferences. In this talk I will start by giving a whistle-stop tour of methodological approaches to address the issue of pleiotropy in Mendelian randomization. I will finish by discussing very recent work on the simultaneous adjustment for weak and pleiotropic instruments within MR.

For further reading see:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/27/159442

https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.09652

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/11/200378

Hope to see you there!

Valentin
(for the organizers: Zoltán Kutalik, Valentin Rousson, Frédéric Schütz)

CHUV
centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois

Valentin ROUSSON - Professeur associé, mathematicien/statisticien
Département universitaire de medecine et santé communautaires (DUMSC)
Médecine sociale et préventive (IUMSP)
Biostatistique et méthodes quantitatives

BIO 2/2ème/103
Rte de la Corniche 10, CH - 1010 Lausanne

+41 (0)21 314 73 28  TEL
Valentin.Rousson@chuv.ch
www.chuv.ch