What is Mendelian Randomization and How Can it be Used as a Tool for Medicine and Public Health? Opportunities and Challenges

Professor George Davey Smith
MA Oxon. MB B.Chir (Cantab), MSc (London), MD (Cantab), DSc (Oxon)and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology
Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences
Bristol, United Kingdom

Dr. Davey Smith will give an overview of the field of Mendelian Randomization, and the opportunities it provides for assessing causal inference in medicine and public health, some of its methodologic limitations, as well as related approaches than can contribute to precision medicine and population health. He will use examples from cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other fields to illustrate this approach (40 minutes)

Discussion: This includes Q&As with speaker about his presentation. We will also focus on the future science agenda for Mendelian Randomization. (20 minutes)

Mendelian randomization is a method of using measured variation in genes of known function to examine the causal effect of a modifiable exposure on disease in observational studies. The term was first proposed by Gray and Wheatley in 1991 for a method that could obtain unbiased estimates of the effects of cancer treatment within a family based design. The term has since been applied to studies that use genetic variants reliably related to a modifiable risk factor to obtain evidence regarding the causal influence of the risk factor. This is achieved through the properties that genetic variants have that render them not susceptible to reverse causation and confounding, which otherwise bedevil epidemiological studies.