The title of the talk is “Understanding Population-based Migraine Through Genome-wide Genetics” by Daniel Chasman from Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Neurological disorders is becoming a global burden and ranks 2nd for number of years lost to disability. History of diabetes and hypertension, postmenopausal hormone use, physical activities, alcohol consumption, and smoking status are more frequent in people with migraines. Aging is a very important factor in migraine development. In the WGHS data, 3 SNPs investigated the relationship with migraine. Among them, PRDM16 rs22651899 increases the risk and TRPM8 rs10166942 decrease the risk of migraine, while LRP1 rs11172113 was not associated with migraine. After the first implementation of genetic analysis in 2009 with 3 SNPs, the number of SNPs that are included in the analysis increased gradually through each study, and reach out to 44 genome-wide significant loci in a large population study called IHGC 2016 with 59,042 participants. The genetic risk score (GRS) has been calculated to investigate the shared genetic contribution of ischemic stroke and migraine. In observational studies, migraine with aura is a risk factor for ischemic stroke. The causality of the relationship between migraines and coronary artery disease (CAD), MI, angina and atrial fibrillation have been assessed using Mendelian Randomization (MR). The confirmation was drawn from CAD, MI, angina. Some loci with likely vascular function show concordant susceptibility between migraine, dissection but inverse susceptibility with stroke/ CAD. The higher degree of heterogeneity in migraine genetics makes a more complex underlying biology investigation of this form of the disease. In conclusion, there is a long road ahead in Science to determine the matrix of migraine, SNPs, and other diseases.

Check out our new exciting list of events for 2020: https://bemcolloquium.com/meetings-calendar/

If you want to get more updates, get on our mailing list, send an Email to: bemcolloquium(at)charite.de

Dear Berlin-area Epidemiological Methods Enthusiasts,

You are invited to our next BEMC Talk on Wednesday, December 4^th.  

BEMC Talk: Wednesday, December 4^th, 2019 @ 4pm

“Causal Decision Analysis of Benefits, Harms and Cost-effectiveness – Estimands, Outcomes, Models and More” – Uwe Siebert, Hall in Tirol, Austria

• Please register online: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6eep88mkT1x1ym3eULvX0clpS_mpY5bw3DzZ-pvbIblAWIQ/viewform?usp=sf_link
• Description: “Decision analysis (or decision-analytic modeling) is a systematic approach to decision making under uncertainty that involves combining evidence for different estimands and outcomes from different study types and different sources in order to derive causal conclusions for future clinical, policy or research actions.
  This talk provides an overview on the concepts and methods of causal decision-analytic modeling as a tool for (1) benefit-harm analysis informing clinical guidelines and personalized medical decision making, (2) cost-effectiveness analysis informing reimbursement decision making and (3) value-of-information analysis for future research prioritization.
  Case examples of published decision analyses will be used to illustrate the fields of application, different model types, the importance of using causal model input parameters (particularly from real-world data), the choice of different estimands (e.g., from the ICH E9 framework) and their causal interpretations, approaches to integrate intercurrent events, as well as guidelines for best modeling practices, possible pitfalls in causal modeling, and future developments.
• Location: Hertwig–Hörsaal (Zweigbibliothek Campus Charité Mitte – Medizinische Bibliothek der Charité), CCM 10117 Berlin
• Map: https://goo.gl/maps/Ed27GBYXeJkjrYyj8 (Look for our signs! It’s the same entrance as the CCM Medical Library, 1st floor)
• Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSefNsbbaTIyo-32yDrIJkrws-BLOY_XGpKT8oHOwAgHyXnIXg/viewform?usp=sf_link
• Note from Uwe Siebert: Want to hear more about modeling? –> SAVE THE DATE:
  https://smdm.org/meeting/18th-biennial-european-conference”

Upcoming Berlin Epi Events:

• December 18^th – BEMC JClub – Paper will be posted online

Interested in other related events? Visit the Institute of Public Health calendar to check out upcoming events & short courses!

Follow BEMC on Twitter and leave questions for our speakers: @BEMColloquium

Dear Berlin-area Epidemiological Methods Enthusiasts,

You are invited to our next BEMC Talk on Wednesday, November 6^th.  

BEMC Talk: Wednesday, November 6^th, 2019 @ 4pm

“The causes of the causes in context: confronting the burden of proof in lifecourse and social epidemiology” – Michelle Kelly-Irving, Inserm-Toulouse, Equity research team, LEASP, Faculté de Medecine, Toulouse, France

• Please register online: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeY8N6sQryvMtiJdMIJ5Pdo0grjkqMB6bSf0jrRaPUzlCAg-A/viewform?usp=sf_link
• Description: “Social determinants are at the root of many potential causal pathways towards health outcomes. Increasingly, the randomized-control trial approach to establishing causality is questioned with the development of other causal approaches. These methods can be especially challenging for research questions involving social determinants and health inequalities within a lifecourse framework. In complex observational settings understanding and defining the context is a key issue affecting the generalizability of findings and transferability of interventions. Theory-driven research may be especially important when dealing with these methodological challenges, and enable lifecourse researchers to interpret their findings. I will present these challenges in terms of research on social-to-biological questions relating to health inequalities, and discuss how interdisciplinarity and triangulation may help to establish the burden of proof.”
• Location: Hertwig–Hörsaal  (Oscar Hertwig-Haus, Anatomie), CCM 10117 Berlin

Upcoming Berlin Epi Events:

• November 20^th – BEMC JClub – Paper will be posted online
• December 4^th – BEMC Talk – Uwe Siebert, Hall in Tirol
• December 18^th – BEMC JClub – Paper will be posted online

Interested in other Institute of Public Health events? Visit our calendar to check out upcoming conferences & short courses!

Follow BEMC on Twitter and leave questions for our speakers: @BEMColloquium

There is no BEMC talk in the month of October, but there is still a lot going on in the epi community!

JClub on Oct 16th: Please click on this link to see the chosen journal article. Note: for the first time ever, we will be reading a pre-print and submitting feedback as a group to the authors! Should be a cool experience to influence ongoing research, so don’t miss out!

IPH lecture on Oct 23rd: Professor John Gill is going to give a talk on “Understanding and communicating risk of rare but serious health complications – an example from living kidney donation” – click on this link to find out more and register for the event.

Our next regularly scheduled BEMC talk will be in November.

See you soon!

“An introduction to precisely and ggdag: Tools for modern methods in R” – a summary by Ana Sofia Oliveira Gonçalves

On the 4th September 2019, Malcolm Barrett held a lecture on the topic of “An introduction to precisely and ggdag: Tools for modern methods in R”. Malcolm Barrett is a PhD student in Epidemiology at the University of Southern California. He has experience in epidemiology and has worked with R studio.

During his lecture, he introduced two R packages that he has developed: “precisely” and “ggdag”. He then wrapped up his talk by sharing best practices in creating software for epidemiology analysis.

Malcolm first introduced the package “precisely”. Precisely is an R package which calculates sample size based on precision rather than power. It allows researchers to calculate sample sizes for common epidemiology measures, like risk differences, risk ratios and odds ratios. It can be used with R or just as a calculator on the web. It goes hand-in-hand with the recent discussion regarding statistical significance. During the discussion, he commented that the move away from p-values will still take some time. The motivation behind developing this package came from reading an article from Rothman and Greenland on planning study size based on precision. In this package, researchers need to set a desired precision, proportions of exposed to unexposed, group ratio and coverage. It also allows the calculation of precision given the sample size. The package shiny helps to run webapps, thus, people who do not work with R can still use precisely. He highlighted the common wrong interpretations of confidence intervals. 

Malcolm proceeded to introduce his package “ggdag”. Ggdag is a package used to create causal diagrams in R. Dagitty does not always create beautiful plots and ggplot2 is the best data visualization tool at the moment. Hence, ggdag aims to integrate dagitty and ggplot2 (and ggraph which is actually part of ggplot2). Dagitty has powerful, robust algorithms and ggplot2 has unlimited flexibility. Ggdag also provides information (graphically) regarding the variables that need to be adjusted/controlled for.

Later on, he gave some insights on designing software for epidemiology. He mentioned that the developed software should be 1) very flexible, in order to automate tedious parts of analysis and be very loud about the difficult part, 2) expressive (modular code is better than monolithic functions), 3) able to fit into the ecosystem. He finished his lecture describing the package he is currently creating, which will be a tool to help clone datasets. 

Dear Berlin-area Epidemiological Methods Enthusiasts,

You are invited to our next BEMC Talk on Wednesday, September 4^th. Please note the location — CVK, Forum 3, Hörsaal 3, 13353 – Campus Virchow Clinic. 

BEMC Talk: Wednesday, September 4^th, 2019 @ 4pm

“An introduction to precisely and ggdag: Tools for modern methods in R” – Malcolm Barrett, California

• Please register online:
• Description: “Modern epidemiology gives us insight into study planning and causal inference, but the success of these approaches require friendly and accessible software. I will discuss two R packages for modern methods in study design and causal inference: precisely and ggdag. precisely is a study planning tool to calculate sample size based on precision rather than power. Calculating sample size based on precision focuses on the width of the confidence interval instead of statistical significance. precisely is a fast and flexible R implementation of the work by Rothman and Greenland on this subject, including a Shiny web app for calculating sample size. ggdag is a toolkit for working with causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), a central tool in causal inference. DAGs help identify many types of bias, such as confounding, selection bias, and measurement error, as well as tell us how to correct for it. ggdag makes it easy to create, analyze, and plot DAGs in ggplot2.”
• **Location change: CVK, Forum 3, Hörsaal 3, 13353 – Campus Virchow Clinic

Upcoming Berlin Epi Events:

• September 18^th – BEMC JClub – Paper posted online
• October 2^nd – BEMC JClub – Paper will be posted online
• Wednesday, October 23^rd – IPH Lecture Partner event– John Gill from Vancouver
  • Charite Mitte Campus, COO starting at 4pm
• November 6^th – BEMC Talk – “The causes of the causes in context: confronting the burden of proof in lifecourse and social epidemiology” – Michelle Kelly-Irving, Toulouse
• November 20^th – BEMC JClub – Paper will be posted online
• December 4^th – BEMC Talk – Uwe Siebert, Hall in Tirol
• December 18^th – BEMC JClub – Paper will be posted online

Interested in other Institute of Public Health events? Visit our calendar to check out upcoming conferences & short courses!

Follow BEMC on Twitter and leave questions for our speakers: @BEMColloquium

Dear Berlin-area Epidemiological Methods Enthusiasts,

We hope you had a great summer break!
We look forward to seeing you again at our September BEMC Talk in a few short weeks…
BEMC Talk: Wednesday, Sept. 4th, 2019 @ 4pm ·

“An introduction to precisely and ggdag: Tools for modern methods in R” -Malcolm Barrett (US)
**IMPORTANT: Location change: Forum 3, Hörsaal 3, Campus Virchow Klinikum (CVK) in Berlin-Wedding, 13353** ·
Please register here

Description: “Modern epidemiology gives us insight into study planning and causal inference, but the success of these approaches require friendly and accessible software. Malcolm will discuss two R packages he has developed as tools for implementing modern methods in study design and causal inference: precisely and ggdag. precisely is a study planning tool to calculate sample size based on precision rather than power. Calculating sample size based on precision focuses on the width of the confidence interval instead of statistical significance. precisely is a fast and flexible R implementation of the work by Rothman and Greenland on this subject, including a Shiny web app for calculating sample size. ggdag is a toolkit for working with causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), a central tool in causal inference. DAGs help identify many types of bias, like confounding, selection bias, and measurement error, as well as tell us how to correct for it. ggdag makes it easy to create, analyze, and plot DAGs in ggplot2.”

Other upcoming Berlin-area epi-related events:
Sept. 18th BEMC JClub article posted here ·
Early Oct no BEMC Talk!
Join us for the IPH lecture on Oct. 23rd · “Understanding and communicating risk of rare but serious health complications – an example from living kidney donation” – John Gill (Vancouver) ·
Oct. 16th, BEMC JClub article posted here ·
February 20-22nd, 2020: REWARD/EQUATOR Conference in Berlin (co-hosted by BIH-QUEST). Details & abstract submission here: https://www.reward-equator-conference-2020.com/

No more BEMC events until September! Have a relaxing summer break.

Best wishes,

Team BEMC