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.chmailto:Valentin.Rousson@chuv.ch www.chuv.chhttp://www.chuv.ch/