4 ms·

8 studies included, each with small sample sizes, with a combined OR estimate of only 1.26 makes it hard to draw any conclusions from this.

• gwern 10y ago
  If the effect size were much larger, like an OR of 3, that would be suspicious as well, since the ORs for suicide/accident/mortality/schizophrenia and Toxoplasma also tend to be in the 1-2 range. I would consider this as part of a broader picture showing a pervasive small-medium correlation of toxoplasma infections & bad things involving the central nervous system. It's interesting because we know that a lot of other infectious agents can really screw up the nervous system, and psychiatric disorders repeatedly show genetic correlations with the immune system.
  • et2o 10y ago
    Very happy to have your comment, Gwern. I am a big fan of some of your work. I certainly agree with you in principle. I just am not sure the sample sizes here are truly large enough to capture an effect on the order of 1.25x for such a complex phenotype. It's not necessarily a criticism of the author's work, which appears to be well-done. I just updated my prior and remain not yet convinced. I also agree that many psychiatric disorders certainly have integral immune components, but on the other hand this is also true for most chronic diseases and pathologic processes (in my opinion).
• UhUhUhUh 10y ago
  OR of 1.25 is what, 15% attributable risk? Without any ground for causality either. I agree that it is really hard to draw any conclusion from this meta-analysis.
• deleted 10y ago
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