A Review Of Published Studies Looking At Statistical Models And

Methods And Their Application To Problems Of Infectious Diseases Such

As COVID-19 In BMJ

Dr. Nancy Agnes, Head,

Technical Operations, Tutorsindia
info@ tutorsindia.com

Keywords: or age category. The correlation technique

will be useful to identify the relationship
statistical meta-analysis service,
between these two variables. And suppose
regression analysis, factor analysis,
the researcher wants to predict the
Confirmatory Factor Analysis, clinical
effectiveness of future outcomes. In that
trial analysis, data mining services,
case, the regression analysis will be useful
biostatistics services, Time series analysis
as it identifies the average linear
using R.
relationship between the dependent and
independent variables. Apart from the

I. INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH usual correlation and regression analysis,

SCIENCE: many researchers adopt dimensionality

reduction techniques such as factor
Health science research is the most
analysis.
interesting research area as we identify the
pattern of Genomic diseases and various III. FACTOR ANALYSIS

other kinds of diseases. Factor analysis reduces the dimensions and

II. STATISTICAL MODELS IN HUMAN creates the latent variables. Each latent

HEALTH SCIENCE: variable acts as another variable in the

study. With those latent variables, one can
The most common statistical approach for
construct linear regression analysis and
any human health studies is correlation and
predict future outcomes or simply identify
regression analysis. Suppose, consider a
the variables' linear relationship.For
vaccine effectiveness study, and the
example, Goni et al. (2020) considered a
researcher wants to identify the
Confirmatory factor analysis to study
effectiveness of vaccine among the gender

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respiratory tract infections in Hajj and IV. BAYESIAN META-ANALYSIS
Umrah. They collected the data in the form
With this information, they conducted a
survey involving 72 variables. In practice,
Bayesian meta-analysis and performed
analysing the entire 72 variables will yield
10000 Markov Chain iterations using fixed
poor results. Thus, the dimensionality
effects and random effects separately and
reduction technique is adopted and
found no statistical incoherence in the
measured by the confirmatory factor
analysis. Furthermore, Xu et al. (2020)
analysis, which uses the chi-square
studied the characteristics of patients
statistic. Also, Saefi et al. (2020) studied
affected by COVID19 outside Wuhan in
the undergraduate student's knowledge
China. The study revealed that people
about COVID19, measures taken by them
affected with COVID outside Wuhan city
to prevent the disease, and maintaining the
are very mild than the people affected in
health style during COVID19. They
Wuhan.
conducted a survey and investigated the
properties of the KAP questionnaire by Apart from the viral infectious disease,

adopting Confirmatory Factor Analysis numerous diseases are of interest to the

(CFA) and RASCH model and the results researchers in finding the causes,

of these analyses revealed that each of the remedies, risk factors, etc. One such

items in the questionnaire possesses increasing research area is cancer studies.

unique qualities and this questionnaire is Calster et al. (2020) considered a cohort

adequate enough to measure the student's study on ovarian cancer and identified the

knowledge, attitude and practice during best model to detect cancer and properly

COVID19. Further, Siemieniuk et al. distinguish cancer types. The dataset has

(2020) compared the effects of COVID19 been collected from IOTA and selected a

treatments from literature using Meta- proper sample for the analysis. Five

analysis. Data for this study has been different models have been conducted, and

collected daily from different sources such the results revealed that SRRisk and

as the WHO website, Centre for Disease ADNEX models performed well in

Control and Prevention in the U.S., classifying the type of cancer. Healthcare

PubMed, etc. The data includes detailed research is to diagnose the disease or find

information of the patient affected with the risk factor associated with the disease.

COVID19, like the length of stay in ICU, Statistical techniques can be used to
duration of ventilation, etc. analyse the causes of the diseases. In that

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sense, Tian et al. (2019) estimated the risk 80%.The fifth model uses a mobile
factors of hospital admission related to application to collect data and to risk-
cardiovascular disease. A total of 184 stratify patients. It uses demographics,
cities in China are included in the study, symptoms, and contact history of users.It
and the information related to pollution further expanded into two more models:
and hospital admissions are collected. blood values and blood values plus
They adopted Time series analysis to computed tomography (C.T.) images.
investigate the association between
pollution and disease. The results showed Table: Overview of prediction models for
that short-term exposure to pollution leads diagnosis and prognosis of covid-1911
to increased hospital admissions for
cardiovascular disease. Statswork
provides high quality biostatistics services
which helps precise estimation of the
effect size and increases the
generalizability of the results of individual
studies.

V. MODELS TO FORECAST THE RISK VI. DIAGNOSTIC MODELS TO

OF COVID-19 IN THE GENERAL DISCOVER COVID-19 IN PATIENTS
POPULATION WITH SUSPECTED INFECTION

They acknowledged seven models that It is a type of method or test used to

help in predicting the risk of covid-19 in help diagnose a disease or condition. It
the general population. Three models from includes imaging tests and tests to measure
one study used hospital admission based blood pressure, pulse, and temperature are
on non-tuberculosis pneumonia, influenza, examples of diagnostic techniques.
acute bronchitis, or upper respiratory tract Diagnosis has significant implications
infections as substitution outcomes in a for patient care, research, and policy.
dataset without any patients with covid-
191. The fourth model uses a deep learning VII .PREDICTIVE MODELS TO
technique detecting thermal video from the DIAGNOSE COVID-19

faces of people wearing facemasks to A predictive model was defined as

detecting abnormal breathing (not covid combining at least two prognostic factors,
related) with a reported sensitivity of based on multivariable analysis, as

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estimating the individual risk of a specific
outcome, presented as regression formula,
nomogram, or in a simplified form, such as
risk score.
A predictive model is a formal grouping of
multiple predictors from which a particular
endpoint's risks can be calculated for
individual patients. Other names for
a predictive model include prognostic (or
prediction) index or rule, risk (or clinical)
prediction model, and predictive model.
VIII. CONCLUSION:
Further, statistical techniques have been
widely used in epidemiological research.
Moustgaard et al. (2020) studied the
impact of treatment and therapeutically
effects in clinical trials using meta-
analysis. The results showed no difference
in the effects of treatments of patients from
the healthcare providers with and without
blinding. Furthermore, Fabbri et al. (2020)
presented a review on the health care
providers and South African patients'
funding using meta-analysis. They
recommended that the corporate
companies provide transparency in
providing funds to patients, and this type
of funding can be seen in high-income
countries. If you are struggling with meta-
analysis you can reach our statistical meta-
analysis service.
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REFERENCES
1. Dauda Goni M, Hasan H, Naing N.N., et al.
Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and
Practice towards Prevention of Respiratory
Tract Infections among Hajj and Umrah
Pilgrims from Malaysia in 2018. International
Journal of Environmental Research and Public
Health. 2019 Nov;16(22).
2. Saefi, M., Fauzi, A., Kristiana, E., Adi, W. C.,
Muchson, M., Setiawan, M. E., Ramadhani, M.
(2020). Validating of Knowledge, Attitudes,
and Practices Questionnaire for Prevention of
COVID-19 infections among Undergraduate
Students: A RASCH and Factor Analysis.
Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and
Technology Education, 16(12), em1926.
3. Siemieniuk R A, Bartoszko J J, Ge L,
Zeraatkar D, Izcovich A, Kum E et al. Drug
treatments for covid-19: living systematic
review and network meta-analysis BMJ 2020;
370 :m2980
4. Van Calster B, Valentin L, Froyman W,
Landolfo C, Ceusters J, Testa A C et al.
Validation of models to diagnose ovarian
cancer in patients managed surgically or
conservatively: multicentre cohort study BMJ
2020; 370 :m2614
5. Whaley C M, Arnold D R, Gross N, Jena A B.
Practice composition and sex differences in
physician income: observational study BMJ
2020; 370 :m2588
6. Tian Y, Liu H, Wu Y, Si Y, Song J, Cao Y et
al. Association between ambient fine
particulate pollution and hospital admissions
for cause specific cardiovascular disease: time
series study in 184 major Chinese cities BMJ
2019; 367 :l6572
7. Forbes H, Douglas I, Finn A, Breuer J,
Bhaskaran K, Smeeth L et al. Risk of herpes
zoster after exposure to varicella to explore the
exogenous boosting hypothesis: self controlled
case series study using U.K. electronic
healthcare data BMJ 2020; 368 :l6987
8. Moustgaard H, Clayton G L, Jones H E,
Boutron I, Jørgensen L, Laursen D R T et al.
Impact of blinding on estimated treatment
effects in randomised clinical trials: meta-
epidemiological study BMJ 2020; 368 :l6802
9. Fabbri A, Parker L, Colombo C, Mosconi P,
Barbara G, Frattaruolo M P et al. Industry
funding of patient and health consumer
organisations: systematic review with meta-
analysis BMJ 2020; 368 :l6925
10. Xu X, Wu X, Jiang X, Xu K, Ying L, Ma C et
al. Clinical findings in a group of patients
infected with the 2019 novel corona virus
(SARS-Cov-2) outside of Wuhan, China:
retrospective case series BMJ 2020; 368 :m606
11. Wynants, L., Van Calster, B., Collins, G. S.,
Riley, R. D., Heinze, G., Schuit, E., ... & van
4
 Smeden, M. (2020). Prediction models for
diagnosis and prognosis of covid-19:
systematic review and critical
appraisal. bmj, 369.

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