On Tuesday 8 June 2021, E.W. Diemer will defend her PhD dissertation, entitled: ‘Causal Inference Approaches to the Study of Prenatal Exposures’.
- Promotor
- Co-promotor
- Date
- Tuesday 8 Jun 2021, 15:30 - 17:00
- Type
- PhD defence
- Space
- Professor Andries Querido room
- Building
- Education Center
- Location
- Erasmus MC
Previous work has suggested that the prenatal period is a potentially critical time for the development of psychiatric and behavioral outcomes in children. In particular, maternal substance use behaviors and micronutrient sufficiency may have an effect on offspring psychiatric health. However, conventional epidemiologic studies of such causal effects are vulnerable to bias from unmeasured confounding. The aim of this dissertation was therefore to explore how the validity of observational studies of the effect of maternal nutritional and substance use exposures on psychiatric symptoms in children could be improved. To do so, we investigated potential physiologic mechanisms by which prenatal exposures might impact psychiatric health in children, and explored the use of Mendelian randomization (MR) to study effects of pregnancy exposures on child outcomes.
Due to corona, the PhD defences do not take place publicly in the usual way in the Senate Hall or in the Professor Andries Querido Room. The candidates will defend their dissertation either in a small group or online.
