Why would associations between cardiometabolic risk factors and depressive symptoms be linear?

BMC Medicine

Annelieke M Roest¹  Peter de Jonge¹ 

[1] Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology and Emotion Regulation (ICPE), University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen, Groningen 9700 RB, the Netherlands

关键词: Dynamic systems;    J-shaped curve;    Non-linear;    Depression;    Cardiovascular disease;   

Others  :  1118327
DOI  :  10.1186/s12916-014-0199-x

 received in 2014-10-03, accepted in 2014-10-03,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

In medical science, researchers mostly use the linear model to determine associations among variables, while in reality many associations are likely to be non-linear. Recent advances have shown that associations may be regarded as parts of complex, dynamic systems for which the linear model does not yield valid results. Using as an example the interdepencies between organisms in a small ecosystem, we present the work of Sugihara et al. in Science 2012, 338:496–500 who developed an alternative non-parametric method to determine the true associations among variables in a complex dynamic system. In this context, we discuss the work of Jani et al. recently published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders, describing a non-linear, J-shaped curve between a series of cardiometabolic risk factors and depression. Although the exact meaning of these findings may not yet be clear, they represent a first step in a different way of thinking about the relationships among medical variables, namely going beyond the linear model.

Please see related article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2261/14/139 webcite

【 授权许可】

   
2014 de Jonge and Roest; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 参考文献 】

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