I would suggest that psychiatrists read this excellent article on how to conduct modern research on relatively small groups of first episode unmedicated bipolar patients who are in the stage of serious depression.

• Published: 24 March 2020

Introduction to clinical research based on modern epidemiology

• Junichi Hoshino  This article will be of immense help to the serious clinical researchers.

Clinical and Experimental Nephrology (2020) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10157-020-01870-3

• 199 Accesses
• 1 Altmetric
• Metrics details

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, recent advances in science technologies have dramatically changed the styles of clinical research. Currently, it has become more popular to use recent modern epidemiological techniques, such as propensity score, instrumental variable, competing risks, marginal structural modeling, mixed effects modeling, bootstrapping, and missing data analyses, than before. These advanced techniques, also known as modern epidemiology, may be strong tools for performing good clinical research, especially in large-scale observational studies, along with relevant research questions, good databases, and the passion of researchers. However, to use these methods effectively, we need to understand the basic assumptions behind them. Here, I will briefly introduce the concepts of these techniques and their implementation. In addition, I would like to emphasize that various types of clinical studies, not only large database studies but also small studies on rare and intractable diseases, are equally important because clinicians always do their best to take care of many kinds of patients who suffer from various kidney diseases and this is our most important mission.