Association, Casual inference & causality Flashcards Preview

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Flashcards in Association, Casual inference & causality Deck (29)
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1
Q

Cause

A

An precurser event/condition/characteristic requrired for the occurrence of the diesase

2
Q

Associations

A

Does the exposure cause the disease? Associations are relationships btw an exposure and an outcome

3
Q

3 types of associations

A

artifactual, non causal, causal

4
Q

artifactual association

A

can arise from significant bias or extensive confounding

5
Q

non causal associations

A

can occur in 2 ways

  1. the disease may cause the exposure
  2. the diesase and the exposure are both associated with a third factor
6
Q

Koch’s postulate’s(for infectious disease)

A

4 keys for implicating a causational relationship

  1. must be present in every case of disease
  2. must not be found in cases of other disease or healthy individuals
  3. must be capable of isolation, culture and reproducing disease in experimental animals
  4. must be recovered from experimentally induced diseased animasl
7
Q

Koch’s postulate’s limitations

A

disease production may require presence of co-factors that postulates don’t address
viruses can’t be cultured similar to bacteria
not all viruses bacteria induce clinical diesease

8
Q

Mill’s Canons

A

the cuase of any effect must consist of a constellation of components that act in concert

9
Q

Sufficient cause

A

a set of minimal conditions/ events that inevitably produce disease. a cuase which preceds a disease, and if present, the diesase will ALWAYS occur

Quite rare apart from genetic abnormailites… homozygous recessive diesase

10
Q

Component causes

A

sufficent cause have multipble required components…. a characterisitc that if present and active, increases the probablity of a particular disease …. some patients must be primed or suseptible to disease before component cuases induce disease….

11
Q

Necessary Cause

A

a cause which precedes a disease and has the following relationship with it…. cause must be present for the disease to occur, yet the cuase may also be present without the disease occuring… TB

12
Q

Component cause

A

in order to examine the influence of a single factor, it is necessary to adjust or control for the effects of the other factors… mathematically or mthodoligically

13
Q

ways to control for multipple causations

A

restrictions, matching, stratification

14
Q

Restricting

A

keep out the other factors from the study

15
Q

matching

A

similar characteristics in each group

16
Q

stratification

A

categorize patients on exposure levels or disease severity or other imporatnat patient characteristics

17
Q

Causal inference process

A

inductively oriented criteria…. hill’s guidlines. derived foloowing us surgeon generals 1964 report on smoking…. IN what circumstances cna we pass from this observed association to a verdict of causation?

18
Q

Hill’s Criteria… an interpretive application process

A
  1. strength
  2. consitency… specificity
  3. temporality
  4. biologic gradient
  5. plausibility… coherence, experiment, anaology
    The higher the number of criteria met, when evaluating an association, the more likely it may be causal
19
Q

Strenght

A

Referes to the size of the association. THe greater the associations, the more convincing it MIGHT actually be causal…
A strong association is neither necessary nor sufficient for causality and weakness of an association is neither necessary nor sufficient for absence of causality.

20
Q

Consistency

A

reproducibility… the repeated observation of association in different populations under different circumstaneces in different studies, not just once…. consitency may still obscure the truth…

21
Q

Temporality

A

is the necessity that the cause PRECEDE the effect/outcome in the time

22
Q

Proximate cause

A

short term interval

23
Q

distant cause

A

long term interval

24
Q

induction period

A

component cause to diesase onset

25
Q

latent period

A

disease onset to diagnosis

26
Q

Biological gradient

A

refers to the observation of a gradient of risk (dose-response) associated with the degree of exposure…. some things have a threshhold effect, no effect until a certain level of expsoure is reached

27
Q

Plausibility(biologically)

A

refers to the biological feasibility (understanding) the associated can be understood and explained (biologically/physiologically/medically)….. It has to be able to be proven that that can occur in the body for that reason….

28
Q

Pitfalls in causal research

A

bias- confounding- effect modifications…..

29
Q

pitfall synergism

A

the interaction of 2 or more presumably -causal variables so that the combined effect is clearly greater than the sum of the individual effects