Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Coexisting Cancer and COVID-19 Mortality

Biases can arise at various stages of research, from study design and data collection to analysis and interpretation. Recognizing and addressing these biases is essential to ensure the validity and reliability of epidemiological findings.Broadly speaking, biases in epidemiology fall into three main categories: selection bias, information bias, and confounding. A more detailed description of possible biases is:  

Cancer survival analysis focuses on quantifying and interpreting the time from a key starting point, such as diagnosis or the initiation of treatment, to a specific endpoint, such as remission or death. This analysis provides critical insights into treatment effectiveness and factors that influence patient outcomes, helping to shape clinical decisions and guide prognostic evaluations. A cornerstone of oncology research, survival analysis tackles the challenges of skewed, non-normally...

Rous Sarcoma virus or RSV was discovered by F. Peyton Rous in the year 1911 as a filterable transmissible agent that could cause tumors in chickens. He won a Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1966. His experiments clearly demonstrated that some cancers could be caused by infectious agents and led to the discovery of many more cancer-causing viruses in animals as well as humans.
RSV is a retrovirus that contains two copies of a plus-strand  RNA genome. Its genome consists of four main open...

Cancer arises from mutations in the critical genes that allow healthy cells to escape cell cycle regulation and acquire the ability to proliferate indefinitely. Though originating from a single mutation event in one of the originator cells, cancer progresses when the mutant cell lines continue to gain more and more mutations, and finally, become malignant. For example, chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) develops initially as a non-lethal increase in white blood cells, which progressively...

Several factors can increase the risk of cancer in an individual. About 50% of cancer cases can be prevented by adopting a healthy lifestyle, regular exercise, eating healthy, and following a modest cancer prevention diet. Epidemiological studies have consistently shown that populations with vegetable and fruit-rich diets have reduced the incidence of cancer. On the other hand, populations who have a diet rich in animal fat, red meat, junk food, or high calories are predisposed to cancer.
Some...

Survival analysis is a cornerstone of medical research, used to evaluate the time until an event of interest occurs, such as death, disease recurrence, or recovery. Unlike standard statistical methods, survival analysis is particularly adept at handling censored data—instances where the event has not occurred for some participants by the end of the study or remains unobserved. To address these unique challenges, specialized techniques like the Kaplan-Meier estimator, log-rank test, and...