Courses

The objective of the course is to provide the participant with insight in the principles and important issues of cardiovascular disease epidemiology. Topics that will be covered are: – Atherosclerosis, the underlying pathology for the most common cardiovascular diseases; – Risk factors for cardiovascular disease; – Worldwide trends in cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality; In addition,…

In clinical epidemiology, research is focused on questions of diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and etiology. To address these questions, several research options are available, including intervention trials and case-control studies using data obtained in a clinical setting. In the course, the principles and practice of clinical epidemiology will be considered and examples from the literature wi…

Prognostic models are increasingly published in the medical literature each year. But are the results relevant for clinical practice? What are the critical elements of a well developed prognostic model? How can we assume that the model makes accurate predictions for our patients, and not only for the sample that was used to develop the model (generalizability, or external validity)? In the cou…

Missing data frequently occur in clinical trials as well as observational studies. An important source for missing data are patients who leave the study prematurely, so-called dropouts. Alternatively, intermittent missing data might occur as well. When patients are evaluated only once under treatment, then the presence of dropouts makes it hard to comply with the intention-to-treat (ITT) princ…

The Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial (RCT) is the most reliable method of assessing the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions. In order to provide the best possible evidence-based health care, health professionals must be able to judge the scientific merits and clinical relevance of published RCTs. In addition, they may be involved in designing and performing a RCT and are frequently …

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The overall objective of the cardiovascular epidemiology course is to produce epidemiologists and other health scientists with the essential knowledge to carry out high quality research in cardiovascular disease.

This course aims to teach users of a Linux/UNIX system how to work with the command line interface. After an introduction to some history and basic concepts the basic commands for file and directory manipulation will be discussed. Subsequently, the students will learn how to manage processes as well as input and output redirection, followed by more advanced text processing utilities like ‘sed’ …

This 5-day introductory course aims to give an overview of the field of Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS). During the first half of the course we focus on the biological knowledge required to understand GWAS as well as the design of GWAS studies and basic skills required to perform GWAS. In the second half of the course you will perform a GWAS as well as post-GWAS analyses to help you unde…

With the advent of a very large number of genetic databases and resources, opportunities to conduct Mendelian randomization(MR) studies are quickly increasing. The MR approach proposes using genetic variants as instrumental variables to test or estimate the potential causal effect of a (non-genetic) risk factor on a disease or health-related outcome. When the assumptions are met, the MR approac…

This course provides an introduction to working with Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) data. It targets individuals who have access to NGS data and want to learn how to work with this data and what the possibilities and limitations of NGS are. Lectures will be complemented with practical sessions in which the student will gain hands-on experience with various tools and techniques.Subjects that w…