EU Marie Curie project MEDIASRES

This is part of the EU Marie Curie project MEDIASRES based in Freiburg, Germany with a number of European participants, see attached AnnexI. Web page with information: http://www.mediasres-itn.eu/ The project has now opened for applications, see the web page. One of the candidates will be employed at the University of Oslo, with support from the Research Council of Norway as applied for here. Summary of Oslo project: There are well-developed approaches for analysing event data (survival) and for analysi ng longitudinal data. However, these two fields have developed separately and are not really integrated with one another. In many clinical settings one would collect both types of data: various measurements will be done when patients come in for visits to the clinic and in addition the occurrence of events (e.g. death) will be registered. The event data are analysed by survival methods, which typically only use baseline covariates, while the clinical measurements (markers, internal covariates) taken durin g the trial are often ignored in the analysis. Hence a lot of potential understanding of progression and treatment mechanism is being lost. We will aim at integrating all important data collected in clinical survival trials. We shall focus on causal inte rpretations, using the concepts of direct and indirect effects and mediation. This may contribute to a mechanistic understanding of treatment effect. We consider a new method: dynamic path analysis. This type of analysis has a great potential impact for c linical research. Data may be exploited in a far more efficient way than what is now done. The clinical advisor to this project is Professor Terje R. Pedersen, Department for Preventive Medicine, Oslo University Hospital.