A multi-source data integration approach reveals novel associations between metabolites and renal outcomes in the German Chronic Kidney Disease study

Omics data facilitate the gain of novel insights into the pathophysiology of diseases and, consequently, their diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. To this end, omics data are integrated with other data types, e.g., clinical, phenotypic, and demographic parameters of categorical or continuous nature. We exemplify this data integration issue for a chronic kidney disease (CKD) study, comprising complex clinical, demographic, and one-dimensional H-1 nuclear magnetic resonance metabolic variables. Routine analysis screens for associations of single metabolic features with clinical parameters while accounting for confounders typically chosen by expert knowledge. This knowledge can be incomplete or unavailable. We introduce a framework for data integration that intrinsically adjusts for confounding variables. We give its mathematical and algorithmic foundation, provide a state-of-the-art implementation, and evaluate its performance by sanity checks and predictive performance assessment on independent test data. Particularly, we show that discovered associations remain significant after variable adjustment based on expert knowledge. In contrast, we illustrate that associations discovered in routine univariate screening approaches can be biased by incorrect or incomplete expert knowledge. Our data integration approach reveals important associations between CKD comorbidities and metabolites, including novel associations of the plasma metabolite trimethylamine-N-oxide with cardiac arrhythmia and infarction in CKD stage 3 patients

Evaluation of websites for biomedical postgraduate courses in Spanish

El objeto de este trabajo es la creación de una herramienta para la evaluación de la calidad de la información contenida en los sitios web de Postgrado de ámbito biosanitario en las universidades españolas. Se ha diseñado y desarrollado una hoja de evaluación (checklist) que ha sido validada y aplicada a los 131 sitios web de Postgrado con Mención de Calidad de tema biosanitario de las universidades españolas. Se han analizado las valoraciones obtenidas por los sitios web y se han aplicado técnicas de clustering y de análisis de componentes principales. Los datos recogidos por la checklist permiten establecer un ranking según la calidad de la información de los sitios web. Además, se observa la existencia de tres grandes grupos de sitios web según sus características y prestaciones. La aplicación de las herramientas diseñadas indica que los sitios web alcanzan valores aceptables, si bien presentan algunos defectos comunes. No obstante, se constata la existencia de varios niveles de calidad de los mismos.The aim of this work is to create a tool for assessing the quality of the information on postgraduate course websites at Spanish universities. An evaluation checklist was developed and applied to the 131 websites of postgraduate biomedical courses with quality accreditation in Spanish universities. The website evaluations were analysed with the application of clustering and principal component analysis techniques. While the average of all the sites is ‘acceptable’ there remain some clear weaknesses in aspects such as accessibility, lack of an internal search engine, or forms - for obtaining the views of current students and lecturers- and evaluation tests - for analysing the results. The tool developed provides a new instrument for evaluating postgraduate course websites. This evaluation enables website comparison, helps identify their strengths and weaknesses, and facilitates their improvement