Epidemiology and Biostatistics Core

五年前，塔夫茨营养合作-药物滥用和艾滋病研究中心(TNC-CDAAR) 是由NIDA资助的，只是全国两家CDAAR之一。CDAAR被指控犯有 以下任务：促进药物滥用和成瘾研究的协作方法；使研究 如果没有研究中心独有的气候、设施和资源，这一点就不会发生 提供；作为一种资源，吸引老牌和有前途的调查人员参与药物滥用研究； 并为研究培训、职业发展和指导提供机会。TNC-CDAAR 是东海岸三所机构(塔夫茨、布朗和约翰霍普金斯大学)之间的合作伙伴关系， 特别关注研究HIV阳性和HIV阴性药物的营养和代谢障碍 用户。在过去的五年里，我们扩大了TNC-CDAAR的范围，将3名合作者 国际网站：阿根廷、印度和越南。到目前为止，我们的主要成就是1) 设计和实施几项新的研究，以评估和比较特定疾病的患病率和发病率 美国和国外不同种族吸毒者的营养和代谢障碍；2) 为希望在以下领域开展类似研究的研究人员开发培训材料、方案和手册 他们所在的地区；3)在与中心相关的研究领域帮助制定新的拨款建议；以及4) 成为吸毒者营养和代谢紊乱方面的资源中心。具体地说，他的流行病学 和生物统计核心(核心F)将为中心成员提供广泛的服务，以促进 设计、收集和分析HIV感染的营养代谢并发症，娱乐用药 合作研究中注射吸毒者的使用、肝炎和肝病 机构。流行病学和生物统计核心的主要作用将是提高 为合作机构和研究所的中心成员收集和分析数据和质量 收集的所有集中数据的保证程序(具体核心清单见下文第三节 服务)。核心将受益于两位流行病学家(唐博士和弗雷斯特博士)和一位 统计学家(特林博士)，都来自塔夫茨大学。我们的团队已经在一起工作了几年 来自巴尔的摩、波士顿和普罗维登斯的吸毒者的横截面和纵向数据集。特林博士 开发了纵向队列研究模型，以适应药物使用的不一致性质， 允许根据感兴趣的结果检查特定类型药物的使用和使用持续时间。

Five years ago, the Tufts Nutrition Collaborative - Center for Drug Abuse and AIDS Research (TNC-CDAAR) was funded by NIDA as just one of two CDAAR's in the nation. The CDAARs were charged with the following mission: to foster a collaborative approach to drug abuse and addiction research; to enable studies that would not occur without the climate, facilities, and resources that a research center can uniquely provide; to serve as a resource to attract established and promising investigators into drug abuse research; and to provide opportunities for research training, career development, and mentoring. The TNC-CDAAR was formed as a partnership between three East Coast Institutions (Tufts, Brown and Johns Hopkins) with a specific focus on studying nutritional and metabolic disorders among HIV-positive and HIV-negative drug users. Over the past five years, we have expanded the TNC-CDAAR to include collaborators from 3 international sites: Argentina, India, and Vietnam. Our major accomplishments, thus far, have been to 1) design and implement several new studies to assess and compare the prevalence and incidence of specific nutritional and metabolic disorders in drug users of different ethnicities, both in the U.S. and abroad; 2) develop training materials, protocols, and manuals for investigators who want to undertake similar studies in their localities; 3) help in the development of new grant proposals in Center-related areas of research; and 4) become a resource center on nutrition and metabolic disorders in drug users. Specifically, he Epidemiology and Biostatistics Core (Core F) will provide a wide range of services to Center Members to facilitate the design, collection, and analysis of nutritional and metabolic complications of HIV infection, recreational drug use, Hepatitis and liver disease among studies of injection drug users (IDUs) from the collaborating institutions. The major role of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Core will be to increase the efficiency of data collection and analysis for Center Members at the collaborating institutions and to institute quality assurance procedures for all centralized data collected (See Section III below for listing of specific Core services). The Core will benefit from the expertise of two epidemiologists (Drs. Tang and Forrester) and a statistician (Dr. Terrin), all from Tufts University. Our team has worked together for several years on multiple cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets of drug users from Baltimore, Boston, and Providence. Dr. Terrin has developed models for longitudinal cohort studies to accommodate the inconsistent nature of drug use, allowing for the examination of use and duration of use for specific types of drugs on outcomes of interest.