Notifications

Exam opportunities can be arranged throughout the summer upon email request.

Schedule 

Lectures
Tuesday 15:40 - 17:10 K7  
Exercise Class
Monday 17:20 - 18:50 K4 (Instructor: Martin Otava)

Course Materials 

Progress of lectures

  1. Tuesday Feb. 14. Introduction. Basic epidemiologic terms. Left truncated data. Empirical incidence estimates.

    Course notes, Sec. 1.1-1.4, pp. 6-10.

    Supplementary reading: Esteve, Benhamou, Raymond (Chap. 1, pp. 1-15).

  2. Tuesday Feb. 21. Age-specific incidence, age-standardized incidence, cumulative incidence. Exposure-disease associations: Excess risk, relative risk.

    Course notes, Sec. 1.4-1.6, pp. 11-15.

    Supplementary reading: Esteve, Benhamou, Raymond (Chap. 2, pp. 49-62). BD1 (Sec. 2.1-2.4, pp. 42-59).

  3. Tuesday Feb. 28. Exposure-disease associations. Introduction to epidemiological study design. Odds ratio estimation and testing.

    Course notes, Sec. 1.6-2.1, pp. 16-21.

    Supplementary reading: BD1 (Sec. 2.8, pp. 69-73, Sec. 4.3, pp. 129-136).

  4. Tuesday March 7. Exact inference on odds ratio via conditional likelihood. Confounding in epidemiological studies.

    Course notes, Sec. 2.2-2.5, pp. 21-26.

    Supplementary reading: BD1, (Sec. 4.2, pp. 124-129, Sec. 3.1-3.4, pp. 85-99).

  5. Tuesday March 14. Sources of bias in epidemiological studies. Presentation on confounding in flu vaccine studies.

    Course notes, Sec. 2.5, pp. 26-28.

    Supplementary reading: BD1, (Sec. 3.4, pp. 103-115).

  6. Tuesday March 21. Analysis of stratified case-control studies: classical methods.

    Course notes, Sec. 3.1-3.2, pp. 29-33.

    Supplementary reading: BD1, (Sec. 4.4, pp. 136-146).

  7. Tuesday March 28. Logistic regression for stratified case-control studies. Analysis of matched case-control studies: classical methods.

    Course notes, Sec. 3.3, 4.1, 4.2, pp. 33-40.

    Supplementary reading: BD1, (Sec. 6.1-6.5, pp. 193-213, Sec. 5.2, pp. 164-166).

  8. Tuesday Apr. 4. Conditional logistic regression for matched case-control studies.

    Course notes, Sec. 4.3, pp. 41-44.

    Supplementary reading: BD1, (Sec. 7.1-7.4, pp. 248-268).

  9. Tuesday Apr. 11. Analysis of cohort studies: ungrouped and grouped data. Discrete Cox model.

    Course notes, Sec. 5.1-5.4, pp. 45-53.

    Supplementary reading: BD2, (Chap. 5, pp. 178-197, Chap. 3, pp. 82–91, Chap. 4, pp. 120–171).

  10. Tuesday Apr. 18. Discrete Cox model. Diagnostic tests.

    Course notes, Sec. 5.4, 6.1–6.4 pp. 53-63.

  11. Tuesday Apr. 25. Drug development process. Phases of clinical trials.

    Presentation I.

    Supplementary reading: FFD (Chap. 1, pp. 1-14).

  12. Tuesday May 2. Phase III trials: protocol, objectives, endpoints, population, randomization, blinding.

    Presentation II.

    Supplementary reading: FFD (Chap. 3, pp. 37-51, Chap. 4, pp. 55-65, Chap. 6, pp. 97-105, Chap. 7, pp. 119-131).

Textbooks 

Course Plan

We will learn statistical methods used in medicine, especially in epidemiology and clinical trials. Terminology specific to medical applications will be explained and some specialized methods will be covered. We will review study designs used in medical studies (cohort study, case-control study, randomized controlled trial) and explain how to analyze each of them. Ethical and administrative aspects of human experiments and their impact on handling statistical issues will be discussed.

Prerequisites

This course assumes advanced knowledge of statistical theory and practice, especially linear regression, logistic regression, loglinear models, survival analysis. Master students of "Probability, statistics and econometrics" must have completed the course on Linear Regression (NMSA407), Advanced Regression Models (NMST432), and Censored Data Analysis (NMST531) before enrolling in this course.