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An early addition to the Triumvirate’s record collection was “Elected” the 1972 single by Alice Cooper. The song was released a few months before the US presidential election of that year: a contest between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. Richard Nixon won but proceedings for his impeachment began the following year. This month the people of the United States will vote for their leader once again and, in Airwaves, we bring you an election themed selection of respiratory science, with psephologists, Gilbert’s Syndrome and, of course, Alice Cooper.
Third party confounding…
Alice Cooper promised: “…the formation of a new party, a third party, the Wild Party!” The presence of a third party, or confounding variable, is constant source of irritation to epidemiologists who strive to minimise unmeasured confounding. A powerful tool to reduce confounding is the Mendelian randomisation study. In this month’s Thorax (see page 955) Laura Horsfall and colleagues describe a Mendelian randomisation study which looks at the possibility of mildly raised serum bilirubin (Gilbert’s Syndrome) providing some protection against lung cancer. Two genetic variants explain around 40% of the variability of bilirubin in the general population. Mendelian randomisation (using these two genetic variants) goes some way to excluding the possibility that any …