Professor Krishnan Bhaskaran
MSc PhD
Professor
of Statistical Epidemiology and Sir Henry Dale Fellow
I graduated from Sheffield University with a BSc Hons in Mathematics in 1999 and took an MSc in Medical Statistics at Leicester University in 2000-2001. I worked for 6 years at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit, on a variety of HIV trials and observational studies, with an emphasis on HIV seroconverters (individuals with well estimated dates of HIV infection). In October 2010, on gaining my PhD at LSHTM for a project looking at environmental risk factors for heart disease, I joined the department as a lecturer, and later senior lecturer. I completed an National Institute for Health Research postdoctoral fellowship to study the effects of widely prescribed drugs on cancer risk (2012-2014). I have since been awarded a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship to study cardiovascular disease risks among people with a history of cancer (2015 to present).
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I am joint Research Degrees Co-ordinator for the Department of Non-Communicable Diseases Epidemiology, and co-director of the Extended Epidemiology MSc module. I deliver several lectures and practical sessions on the MSc in Epidemiology. I teach on the Extended Epidemiology, and Advanced Statistical Methods for Epidemiology (ASME) MSc modules, and on the Advanced Course in Epidemiological Analysis (ACEA) and Practical Pharmacoepidemiology short courses.
Research
My main areas of interest are cancer epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology. I currently hold a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship for a programme of work looking at cardiovascular diseases among people with a history of cancer. I am also interested in mental health and quality of life among cancer survivors and am supervising a research degree student working on this topic.
I have an ongoing interest in pharmacoepidemiology, particularly in relation to cancer outcomes, and completed an NIHR fellowship programme in this area. I have also studied other predictors of cancer risk, notably body mass index.
I have an ongoing interest in the use of eHealth data and am part of a wider group at LSHTM working with large-scale routinely collected data such as the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) primary care data.
Finally, I am interested in the application of novel or non-standard statistical methods to real clinical problems: a current interest is whether marginal structural modelling and related methods can help to disentangle the effects of drugs from the effects of underlying disease in observational diabetes research, i.e. to tackle time-varying confounding by indication.
KEY PUBLICATIONS
Farmer, R.E. ; Ford, D. ; Mathur R ; Chaturvedi, N. ; Kaplan, R. ; Smeeth, L. ; Bhaskaran, K. Metformin use and risk of cancer in patients with type 2 diabetes: A cohort study of primary care records using inverse probability weighting of marginal structural models. INT J EPIDEMIOL 2019; doi: 10.1093/ije/dyz005
Bhaskaran K, dos Santos Silva I, Leon DA, Douglas IJ, Smeeth L. Body mass index and overall and cause-specific mortality - population-based cohort study among 3.6 million UK adults. LANCET DIABETES AND ENDPCRINOLOGY, 2018; Dec;6(12):944-953. doi: 10.1016/S2213-8587(18)30288-2
Matthews A, Stanway S, Farmer R, Strongman H, Thomas S, Lyon A, Smeeth L, Bhaskaran K. Long-term adjuvant endocrine therapy and the risk of cardiovascular disease in female breast cancer survivors: a systematic review. BMJ 2018; doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3845
Carreira H, Williams R, Muller M, Harewood R, Stanway S, Bhaskaran K. Adverse mental health outcomes in women with and without breast cancer history: a systematic review. J NATL CANCER INST 2018; 110(12):1311-1327. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djy177
Chidwick K, Strongman H, Matthews A, Stanway S, Lyon AR, Smeeth L, Bhaskaran K. Statin use in cancer survivors versus the general population: cohort study using primary care data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink. BMC CANCER 2018. 18(1):1018. doi: 10.1186/s12885-018-4947-8
Søgaard KK, Sørensen HT, Smeeth L, Bhaskaran K. Acute pericarditis and cancer risk: a matched cohort study using linked UK primary and secondary care data. J AM HEART ASSOC 2018. doi: 10.1161/JAHA.118.009428
Hansson E, Forbes HJ, Langan SM, Smeeth L, Bhaskaran K. Herpes zoster risk after 21 specific cancers: population based case-control study. BRIT J CANCER 2017: 116(12):1643-1651. doi: 10.1038/bjc.2017.124
Søgaard KK, Farkas DK, Ehrenstein V,; Bhaskaran K, Bøtker HE, Sørensen HT. Pericarditis as a marker of occult cancer and a prognostic factor for cancer mortality. CIRCULATION. 2017: 136(11):996-1006 doi: 10.1161/circulationaha.116.024041
Matthews A, Herrett E, Gasparrini A, van Staa T, Goldacre B, Smeeth L, Bhaskaran K. Impact of statin-related media coverage on the use of statins: an interrupted time series analysis using UK primary care data. BMJ 2016 Doi: 10/1136/bmj.i3283
Matthews A, Langan SM, Douglas IJ, Smeeth L, Bhaskaran K. Phosphodiesterase Type 5 inhibitors and risk of malignant melanoma: matched cohort study using primary care data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink. PLOS MED 2016 doi: dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002037
Farmer R, Ford D, Forbes HJ, Chaturvedi N, Kaplan R, Smeeth L, Bhaskaran K. Metformin and Cancer in Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Comprehensive Bias Evaluation. INT J EPIDEMIOL 2017: 46(2):745. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyx046
Bhaskaran K, Douglas I, Forbes H, dos Santos Silva I, Leon D, Smeeth L. Body mass index and risk of 22 specific cancers: a population-based study of 5.2 million UK adults. LANCET 2014; doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)60892-8
