EcoSta 2021: Start Registration
View Submission - EcoSta2021
A0728
Title: Mediation in the analysis of metabolomic data Authors:  Su Chu - Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (United States) [presenting]
Abstract: Causal mediation analysis in the molecular study of disease is increasingly common but has yet to enjoy much application in the relatively newer discipline of metabolomics. Metabolomics is the study of all small molecules and their various interactions within a biological system. As the most proximal '-ome' to disease phenotype in the biological central dogma, the metabolome plays a mediating role in intrinsic biological and extrinsic environmental risk factors as they exert their effects on disease phenotype. It is thus a crucial mechanistic inflexion point for developing personalized, precision medicine intervention strategies. We survey techniques for integrative high dimensional metabolomic mediation, considering the specific biases that inherently characterize untargeted global profiling, and identify optimal strategies via simulation. We illustrate our approach with real data, and extensions to various study designs are also considered.