Morabia Alfredo
Am J Epidemiol. 2015 Dec 1;182(11):901-5. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwv221. Epub 2015 Nov 14.
In an attempt to reproduce the results of an inconclusive 1927 report by the British Medical Research Council on the hereditary versus social origins of rheumatic fever, Read, Ciocco, and Taussig, from Johns Hopkins University, with the support of Frost, conducted a case-control study in 1935 and 1936. Their study, which appeared in the American Journal of Hygiene in 1938, was outstanding for its clear and tidy rationale for separating hereditary from environmental causes. The authors compared the prevalence of rheumatic fever among the relatives of 33 children admitted for "incident" rheumatic fever and 33 control children admitted in a tuberculosis clinic for reasons other than rheumatic fever. Both rheumatic fever (cases) and tuberculosis (controls) were diseases of the poor. All family members of both cases and controls, including uncles, aunts, and grandparents, were eligible for interview and physical examination. The results were compatible with the presence of an "inherited predisposition" to rheumatic fever because the disease was more prevalent among the uncles, aunts, and grandparents of case patients than among those of control patients. Methodologically, the paper by Read, Ciocco, and Taussig is an important but almost completely forgotten milestone in the evolution of case-control studies and of genetic epidemiology.
为了重现英国医学研究委员会1927年一份关于风湿热遗传与社会起源的尚无定论的报告结果，约翰·霍普金斯大学的里德、乔科和陶西格在弗罗斯特的支持下，于1935年和1936年进行了一项病例对照研究。他们的研究于1938年发表在《美国卫生杂志》上，因其清晰合理地将遗传因素与环境因素区分开来而引人注目。作者比较了33名因“初发”风湿热入院的儿童亲属以及33名因非风湿热原因在结核病诊所入院的对照儿童中风湿热的患病率。风湿热（病例组）和结核病（对照组）都是穷人易患的疾病。病例组和对照组的所有家庭成员，包括叔叔、阿姨和祖父母，都有资格接受访谈和体格检查。结果表明存在风湿热的“遗传易感性”，因为病例患者的叔叔、阿姨和祖父母中该疾病的患病率高于对照患者的亲属。从方法学角度来看，里德、乔科和陶西格的这篇论文是病例对照研究和遗传流行病学发展过程中一个重要但几乎被完全遗忘的里程碑。
