Russia and a few other Eurasian countries have been home to the fastest-growing epidemics of HIV in the world over the last several years. A study published by the U.S. National Intelligence Council in 2002 identified Russia among five "second wave" countries likely to experience explosive further increases in HIV/AIDS over the next decade if appropriate measures are not taken. It is widely acknowledged that HIV/AIDS is evolving as a serious epidemiological, social, political, and national security problem throughout the Eurasian region. Yet each of these countries confronts a unique set of challenges and strategies for facing those challenges. This volume offers country-specific accounts, authored by the leading players in the analysis of the situation and the fight against the virus.

This book tackles the difficult challenge of uncovering the pathogenic cause, epidemiological mechanics and broader historical impacts of an extremely deadly third-century ancient Roman pandemic. The core of this research is embodied in a novel systems synthesis methodology that allows for ground-breaking historical-scientific problem-solving. Through precise historical and scientific problem-solving, analysis and modelling, the authors piece together a holistic puzzle portrait of an ancient plague that is fully consistent, in turn, with both the surviving ancient evidence and the latest in cutting edge twenty-first-century modern medical and molecular phylogenetic science. Demonstrating the broader relevance of the crisis-beset world of the third-century Roman Empire in providing guiding and cautionary historical lessons for the present, this innovative book provides fascinating insights for students and scholars across a range of disciplines.

What is the prevalence of insomnia in a particular age group, in men and women, or in Caucasians and African Americans? What is the average total sleep time among normal sleepers among these groups? How does the sleep of Caucasians and African Americans differ? These are just some of the questions addressed in The Epidemiology of Sleep. This new book presents the most detailed and comprehensive archive of normal and abnormal sleep patterns. Based on a landmark study supported by the National Institute on Aging, 772 subjects from a host of populations including men, women, and various age and ethnic groups, prepared detailed sleep diaries for a two-week period. The use of these sleep diaries yielded a plethora of data on such characteristics as normal sleep patterns, various forms of insomnia, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and daytime sleepiness differentiated by age, sex, and ethnicity. The results generated by these data, charted in the book's numerous tables and graphs, provide a critical methodological advance in the sleep literature. The Epidemiology of Sleep opens with an overview of the rationale and unique characteristics of the study. This is followed by a comprehensive review of the existing epidemiological literature on sleep. Chapter three presents a detailed description of the methods used in the survey followed by meticulous information on the epidemiology of normal and insomnia sleep, that is unparalleled in the literature. Chapter six provides an archive of sleep patterns among African Americans. The book concludes with a discussion and interpretation of the most interesting findings. This insightful study, coupled with the comprehensive review of the existing literature on the epidemiology of sleep, make this volume an invaluable resource for sleep researchers, clinicians, health and clinical psychologists, gerontologists, epidemiologists, and advanced students.

This edited volume presents current research in biostatistics with emphasis on biopharmaceutical applications. Featuring contributions presented at the 2017 ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium held in Chicago, IL on June 25 to 28, 2017, this book explores timely topics that have a high potential impact on statistical methodology and future research in biostatistics and biopharmaceuticals. The theme of this conference was Statistics for a New Generation: Challenges and Opportunities, in recognition of the advent of a new generation of statisticians. The conference attracted statisticians working in academia, government, and industry; domestic and international statisticians. From the conference, the editors selected 28 high-quality presentations and invited the speakers to prepare full chapters for this book. These contributions are divided into four parts: Part I Biostatistical Methodology, Part II Statistical Genetics and Bioinformatics, Part III Regulatory Statistics, and Part IV Biopharmaceutical Research and Applications.Featuring contributions on topics such as statistics in genetics, bioinformatics, biostatistical methodology, and statistical computing, this book is beneficial to researchers, academics, practitioners and policy makers in biostatistics and biopharmaceuticals.

Our understanding, prevention, and treatment of HIV have made remarkable strides in the past two decades, but the way has not been smooth or straight. Part history, part narrative, and mainly "scientific autopsy," this book is an insider's account of the errors, controversies, and corrections that have marked the first 25 years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. The author discusses the sources of these errors and controversies and provides many examples. These range from the scientifically contentious and protracted-- such as laboratory contaminations that lead to identifying HTLV-III and HTLV-IV, or arguments that there were HIV patients who were "silently infected," and not detectable by standard HIV tests--to controversies that the scientific community quickly evaluated and discarded--such as the belief that HIV is spread by mosquitoes, or that one AIDS-associated cancer is caused by "poppers," nitrates inhaled for sexual stimulation. This book describes how these many scientific errors occurred, how they got propagated, how they distracted researchers and the public, and how they got corrected. Holmberg, a longtime past Chief of Epidemiology in the CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, shows us how scientific errors and controversies inevitably occur in the absence, ignorance, or dismissal of good data, and the promotion of bad data or analyses. He suggests reforms of governmental processes, medical and scientific journal review, and in graduate education that may help scientists recognize and correct errors faster, and so deal with future epidemics more efficiently.

*Includes new chapters on Fellowship Grants and Career Development Awards designed for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career faculty *Provides strategies to highlight the "overall impact" of the grant, one of the most important aspects determining NIH funding in a new chapter on Significance and Innovation *Provides step-by-step guidelines for grant structure and style alongside broader strategies for developing a research funding portfolio *Explains how to avoid common errors and pitfalls, supplying critical dos and don'ts that aid in writing solid grant proposals *Illustrates key concepts with extensive examples from successfully funded proposals

From the President of the Research Society on Alcoholism In the last decade research concerning the causes and consequences of alcohol abuse and alcoholism has come of age. We have witnessed a plethora of sci entific findings that have shed light on some of the actions of alcohol at the molecular level. Interesting new data have been forthcoming on the complexi ties of the development of tolerance to alcohol. It is becoming increasingly appropriate to consider that tolerance to alcohol involves biological as well as psychological factors. New scientific insights have been gained concerning the treatment of with drawal as well as the presence of persistent withdrawal signs that may possibly be involved with relapse. More recently, new and compelling data indicating that alcoholism is a common familial disorder have appeared. Clinical studies indicate that alcoholism is a heterogeneous disorder with multiformity in clin ical symptomatology and genetic heterogeneity. The heterogeneity of the clin ical features and the heritability of the predisposing factors of alcoholism are currently under vigorous scientific investigation. In the past several years sophisticated psychosocial studies have provided fundamental information on subjects at high risk for alcoholism. Psychosocial and biological studies of families including alcoholics and subjects at high risk are likely to bring new insights to our understanding of etiological factors. Moreover, as a result of these studies we stand to develop better prevention initiatives and treatment approaches."

Sample Sizes for Clinical Trials, Second Edition is a practical book that assists researchers in their estimation of the sample size for clinical trials. Throughout the book there are detailed worked examples to illustrate both how to do the calculations and how to present them to colleagues or in protocols. The book also highlights some of the pitfalls in calculations as well as the key steps that lead to the final sample size calculation. Features: Comprehensive coverage of sample size calculations, including Normal, binary, ordinal, and survival outcome data Covers superiority, equivalence, non-inferiority, bioequivalence and precision objectives for both parallel group and crossover designs Highlights how trial objectives impact the study design with respect to both the derivation of sample formulae and the size of the study Motivated with examples of real-life clinical trials showing how the calculations can be applied New edition is extended with all chapters revised, some substantially, and four completely new chapters on multiplicity, cluster trials, pilot studies, and single arm trials The book is primarily aimed at researchers and practitioners of clinical trials and biostatistics, and could be used to teach a course on sample size calculations. The importance of a sample size calculation when designing a clinical trial is highlighted in the book. It enables readers to quickly find an appropriate sample size formula, with an associated worked example, complemented by tables to assist in the calculations.

This book focuses on the meaning of statistical inference and estimation. Statistical inference is concerned with the problems of estimation of population parameters and testing hypotheses. Primarily aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students of statistics, the book is also useful to professionals and researchers in statistical, medical, social and other disciplines. It discusses current methodological techniques used in statistics and related interdisciplinary areas. Every concept is supported with relevant research examples to help readers to find the most suitable application. Statistical tools have been presented by using real-life examples, removing the "fear factor" usually associated with this complex subject. The book will help readers to discover diverse perspectives of statistical theory followed by relevant worked-out examples. Keeping in mind the needs of readers, as well as constantly changing scenarios, the material is presented in an easy-to-understand form.

This widely used text provides a clear and critical summary of research approaches to the epidemiological study of workplace hazards. It describes the historical development of occupational epidemiology, methods for characterizing occupational exposures, and techniques for designing and implementing epidemiologic studies in this area. The relative strengths and limitations of various study designs for investigating specific health outcomes are emphasized. Also included are more advanced discussions of statistical analysis, exposure and dose modeling, and subsequent applications of data derived from epidemiologic research, as in meta-analysis, pooled analysis, and statistical analysis, exposure and dose modeling, and risk assessment. Since the first edition was published 15 years ago, there have been numerous advances in epidemiologic methods to accommodate a broadened scope of investigations of occupational exposures and associated adverse health outcomes. Thus, in this Second Edition the authors have updated their discussions of methodology to include such topics as case-cohort and case-crossover designs and statistical analysis of repeated measures data, and have expanded the examples they use throughout the book to demonstrate the applications of these methods to a wide range of acute and chronic health outcomes. They have also added a new chapter on occupational health sureillance. Their text is unique for its strong emphasis on the definition and assessment of exposures, the application of quantitative exposure data to epidemiologic models, and the recognition that improvements in workplace risk identification and quantification will come from careful integration of theseapproaches. This fine volume will serve both as a textbook for courses on occupational epidemiology and as a practical handbook of the design, implementation, and evaluation of research in this field.

This book comprehensively reviews the disease dynamics, distribution, surveillance, epidemiology, diagnosis, control strategies, and management of the desert malaria. It highlights the potential risks of unstable but often exacerbated malaria conflagration as epidemics in the middle of duned desert, a desert oasis, and desert-fringe regions. Further, it reveals the factors inveigled into desert environments due to extensive anthropogenic activities such as canalized irrigation projects, high-yielding new agriculture practices, human concentration, and increased trade. It addresses the impact of irrigation on the malarial dynamics and its coupling to the climate forcing. The book also offers a model for desert transformation into malaria heaven under the changed climatic conditions including high rainfall, humidity, and depletion in temperature. Lastly, it offers insight into malaria epidemiology and disease control in the desert's arid environments. This book is an essential resource for medical entomologists, parasitologists, epidemiologists, and public health researchers.

Covid-19 has given renewed, urgent attention to 'the pandemic' as a devastating, recurrent global phenomenon. Today the term is freely and widely used-but in reality, it has a long and contested history, centred on South Asia. Pandemic India is an innovative enquiry into the emergence of the idea and changing meaning of pandemics, exploring the pivotal role played by-or assigned to-India over the past 200 years. Using the perspectives of the social historian and the historian of medicine, and a wide range of sources, it explains how and why past pandemics were so closely identified with South Asia; the factors behind outbreaks' exceptional destructiveness in India; responses from society and the state, both during and since the colonial era; and how such collective catastrophes have changed lives and been remembered. Giving a 'long history' to India's current pandemic, the book offers comparisons with earlier epidemics of cholera, plague and influenza. David Arnold assesses the distinctive characteristics and legacies of each episode, tracking the evolution of public health strategies and containment measures. This is a historian's reflection on time as seen through the pandemic prism, and on the ways the past is used-or misused-to serve the present.

Ever since Edwina Currie's salmonella, Britain has seemed cursed by major food safety scares, with E.coli and BSE particularly prominent. Amidst tabloid frenzy and recrimination, the public is dependent upon sober scientific risk assessment and rational evaluation of what went wrong. Hugh Pennington has been at the forefront of this as a scientist, expert witness and commentator, and this book is his accessible but rigorous account of these diseases and the events surrounding them. This is a disaster book for the general reader giving authoritative but non-technical accounts of BSE/variant CJD and E.coli O157 - what happened, what went wrong, the human interest, and the science - all in the context of disasters (like Piper Alpha, Aberfan, and rail crashes), history and politics.

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), (also known as black fever or Kala-azar) is a life-threatening disease first reported from the Indian subcontinent. VL ranks as the world's second largest parasitic disease killer and is a neglected tropical disease. Most of those infected by this life-threatening disease are uneducated daily wagers working to support their families, and vectors easily disseminate the disease to their neighbors. Owing to recent involvement of stakeholders, the number of patients is decreasing, but eradication remains a distant goal. This second edition presents latest reports of visceral Leishmaniasis by specialists working at the forefront of the endemic areas in Indian subcontinent. It also introduces vaccine development and inhibitors to Trypanosomatidae; some of them describing feasibility studies in visceral Leishmaniasis for the first time. Recent progress of the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) is also reviewed and the contents share this collaborative research from the forefront of endemic sites in Bangladesh. Widely covering basic, clinical, epidemiological and entomological aspects, this volume will be of great interest to dedicated researchers interested inLeishmaniasis and to experts of NTDs in global health. There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of disease control is bound in shallows and in miseries. ~modified from Shakespeare ~

This book describes appropriate statistical models that are commonly utilized in neuropsychology. The book discusses such issues as developing normative data for neuropsychological measures, assessing the validity of neuropsychological tests, and quantifying change "over time" through longitudinal analyses. The rationale for and allure of the volume is the fact that there are no publications that dovetail the two subdisciplines of applied statistics and neuropsychology. The overall objective of this book is to provide a pragmatic and concrete source for applying methodological and statistical techniques in research studies whose emphasis includes neuropsychology. Since there are a plethora of technique to arrive at similar answers, each method with its strengths and weaknesses will be delineated. The beauty of the book will be that it will hopefully demystify commonly encountered issues faced with researchers. More specifically, it will provide a "how to do it" approach.

HIV/AIDS is but one of a number of new and deadly diseases which threaten communities throughout the world. Together with the resurgence of diseases once thought to have been 'conquered', the human costs and social implications have begun to engage a diverse range of practitioners and scholars. The premise behind this collection of distinguished essays in that the causal relations, impacts and consequences of this disturbing trend are as much political as medical or scientific. This book is an excellent introduction to a field of growing importance.

This volume investigates the links between the incidence of diet-related cancers and dietary patterns within Europe. It presents current understanding of the major cancers thought to be caused by diet alongside detailed data on regional variations in dietary composition, and collates these sets of information to illustrate associations between foods and nutrients and the risk of cancer at specific sites. There is particular discussion of the role of fat, meat, fibre, cereals and fresh vegetables. The importance of the "Mediterranean diet", and regional variance in this diet within Europe, is examined. Japanese and US dietary evidence is also considered. This book highlights the debate on cancer and diet, and points the way ahead for important new research.

Most human diseases come from nature, from pathogens that live and breed in non-human animals and are "accidentally" transmitted to us. Human illness is only the culmination of a complex series of interactions among species in their natural habitats. To avoid exposure to these pathogens, we must understand which species are involved, what regulates their abundance, and how they interact.
Lyme disease affects the lives of millions of people in the US, Europe, and Asia. It is the most frequently reported vector-borne disease in the United States; About 20,000 cases have been reported each year over the past five years, and tens of thousands more go unrecognized and unreported. Despite the epidemiological importance of understanding variable LD risk, such pursuit has been slow, indirect, and only partially successful, due in part to an overemphasis on identifying the small subset of 'key players' that contribute to Lyme disease risk, as well as a general misunderstanding of effective treatment options.
This controversial book is a comprehensive, synthetic review of research on the ecology of Lyme disease in North America. It describes how humans get sick, why some years and places are so risky and others not. It challenges dogma - for instance, that risk is closely tied to the abundance of deer - and replaces it with a new understanding that embraces the complexity of species and their interactions. It describes why the place where Lyme disease emerged - coastal New England - set researchers on mistaken pathways. It shows how tiny acorns have enormous impacts on our probability of getting sick, why biodiversity is good for our health, why living next to a small woodlot is dangerous, and why Lyme disease is an excellent model system for understanding many other human and animal diseases. Intended for an audience of professional and student ecologists, epidemiologists, and other health scientists, it is written in an informal style accessible also to non-scientists interested in human health and conservation.

Arising from firm foundations laid by mathematical population genetics, clinical genetics, and statistical epidemiology, genetic epidemiology attempts to identify the many components of risk

attributable to genes, environments, and interactions, and the course of its research can follow many diverse paths. In "Genetic Epidemiology," the success of genome-wide association studies in their identification of hundreds of disease susceptibility loci has inspired renowned experts to contribute thorough methodologies, which aim to bring together bioinformaticians, geneticists, clinicians, statisticians, and epidemiologists in the study of this vital field. The volume opens with chapters covering the basics; however, it quickly moves on to coverage of more specialist topics such as twin studies, Mendelian randomization, genetic association studies, more advanced areas, as well as case studies. As a part of the highly successful "Methods in Molecular Biology " series, this work provides the detailed description of the application and analysis of the most commonly employed methods that are necessary for a firm grounding in the field.

Authoritative and cutting-edge, "Genetic Epidemiology" aims to provide a basic framework for crucial interdisciplinary communication and understanding suited to newcomers to the field as well as experienced researchers and graduate level students."

A deeply reported, insightful, and literary account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body.

Epidemic diseases enter the world by chance, but they become catastrophic by human design.

With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health.

Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease. Based on in-depth research and cultural analysis, Bonhomme explores Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19 amidst the backdrop of unequal public policy. But much more than a remarkable history, A History of the World in Six Plaguesis also a rising call for change.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a very general and flexible multivariate technique that allows relationships among variables to be examined. The roots of SEM are in the social sciences. In writing this textbook, the authors look to make SEM accessible to a wider audience of researchers across many disciplines, addressing issues unique to health and medicine. SEM is often used in practice to model and test hypothesized causal relationships among observed and latent (unobserved) variables, including in analysis across time and groups. It can be viewed as the merging of a conceptual model, path diagram, confirmatory factor analysis, and path analysis. In this textbook the authors also discuss techniques, such as mixture modeling, that expand the capacity of SEM using a combination of both continuous and categorical latent variables. Features: Basic, intermediate, and advanced SEM topics Detailed applications, particularly relevant for health and medical scientists Topics and examples that are pertinent to both new and experienced SEM researchers Substantive issues in health and medicine in the context of SEM Both methodological and applied examples Numerous figures and diagrams to illustrate the examples As SEM experts situated among clinicians and multidisciplinary researchers in medical settings, the authors provide a broad, current, on the ground understanding of the issues faced by clinical and health services researchers and decision scientists. This book gives health and medical researchers the tools to apply SEM approaches to study complex relationships between clinical measurements, individual and community-level characteristics, and patient-reported scales.

This volume contains refereed papers by participants in the two weeks on Clinical Trials and one week on Epidemiology and the Environment held as part of the six weeks workshop on Statistics in the Health Sciences Applications at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) in the summer of 1997. Donald Berry was in charge of the weeks on clinical trials, and Elizabeth Halloran organized the week on epidemiology and the environment. The collection includes a major contribution from Jamie Robins, Andrea Rotnitzky, and Daniel Scharfstein on sensitivity analysis for selection bias and unmeasured confounding in missing data and causal and inference models. In another paper, Jamie Robins presents a new class of causal models called marginal structural models. Alan Hubbard, Mark van der Laan, and Jamie Robins present a methodology for consistent and efficient estimation of treatment-specific survival functions in observational settings. Brian Leroux, Xingye Lei, and Norman Breslow present a new mixed model for spatial dependence for estimating disease rates in small areas. Andrew Lawson and Allan Clark demonstrate Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods for clustering in spatial epidemiology. Colin Chen, David Chock, and Sandra Winkler present a simulation study examining confounding in estimation of the epidemiologic effect of air pollution. Dalene Stangl discusses issues in the use of reference priors and Bayes factors in analyzing clinical trials. Stephen George reviews the role of surrogate endpoints in cancer clinical trials.

The main purpose of this book is to describe ways of assessing forensic science evidence and the means of communicating this assessment to a court of law. A clear exposition of probability from the Bayesian perspective is provided. The underlying theme of the book is the emphasis on the importance, for the assessment of the value of associative evidence linking a suspect and a crime scene, or the comparison of two probabilities, the first being that of the evidence if the suspect is guilty, the second being that of the evidence if the suspect is innocent. Edited as a joint venture between a statistician and a forensic scientist, contributions from leading researchers in the area have been brought together. Technical expressions are kept to a minimum, with those wanting more information on a particular statistical test being referred to standard textbooks as and when necessary. The editor's aim is to ensure that proper attention is placed on the courts to consideration of the probability of the evidence of association if the suspect is innocent as well as to this probability if the suspect is guilty. The work is intended for forensic science practitioners, legal practitioners, stati

Epidemiology, the study of population health by means of group comparisons, is of increasing importance to health policy and medicine, but it has never before received sustained philosophical attention. This book is the first comprehensive philosophical treatment of the science of epidemiology, drawing together material on causation, causal inference, prediction, the interpretation of effect measures, the nature of disease, and legal uses of epidemiological evidence. Old philosophical problems are seen from new angles, especially general causation, causal explanation, and the use of causal knowledge to predict. The conceptual development of epidemiology is invigorated by a critical examination of foundational doctrines. Causal inference, interaction, the interpretation of measures of attributability, risk relativism, and the notion of multifactorial disease are all scrutinized. The attempted use of epidemiological evidence in legal context is also analyzed, along with the philosophical problems it throws up. This book is essential reading for any professional or lay reader with an interest in understanding the conceptual and methodological foundations of epidemiology, as well as its difficulties.

Applying research into assessments of community theatre, epidemiology, and young people's shared and private stories using a wide range of methodologies, this book explores the potential efficacy of community theatre to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in Tanzania with reference to several other comparable sites in Africa.