Invited commentary: Gene X lifestyle interactions and complex disease traits--inferring cause and effect from observational data, sine qua non.

ABSTRACT: Observational epidemiology has made outstanding contributions to the discovery and elucidation of relations between lifestyle factors and common complex diseases such as type 2 diabetes. Recent major advances in the understanding of the human genetics of this disease have inspired studies that seek to determine whether the risk conveyed by bona fide risk loci might be modified by lifestyle factors such as diet composition and physical activity levels. A major challenge is to determine which of the reported findings are likely to represent causal interactions and which might be explained by other factors. The authors of this commentary use the Bradford-Hill criteria, a set of tried-and-tested guidelines for causal inference, to evaluate the findings of a recent study on interaction between

SUBMITTER: Franks PW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2984255 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature