Nutritional Epidemiology Methods and Related Statistical Challenges and Opportunities

The public health importance of nutritional epidemiology research is discussed, along with methodologic challenges to obtaining reliable information on dietary approaches to chronic disease prevention. Measurement issues in assessing dietary intake need to be addressed to obtain reliable disease association information. Selfreported dietary data typically incorporate major random and systematic biases. In-take biomarkers offer potential for more reliable analyses, but biomarkers have been established only for a few dietary variables, and these may be too expensive to apply to all participants in large epidemiologic cohorts. A possible way forward involves additional nutritional biomarker development using high-dimensional metabolomic profiling, using blood and urine specimens, in conjunction with further development of statistical approaches for accommodating measurement error with failure time response data. Statisticians have the opportunity to contribute greatly to worldwide public health through the development of statistical methods to address these nutritional epidemiology research challenges, as is elaborated in this contribution.