Mediation analysis - possibilities and pitfalls for medicaion safety studies in pregnancy

Mediation analysis is a tool to better understand the mechanisms of how treatments work, by dissecting the total effect into a direct and indirect effects (through other variables). Methods for doing such analyses have been popular in fields like social science, and especially psychology, for decades, and increasingly in fields like epidemiology. 

With the recent developments in causal inference, various limitations of the earlier approaches has been pointed out. New frameworks for causal mediation analysis have been developed based on concepts such as natural direct and indirect effects and controlled direct effects.

The aim of this talk is to give a short introduction to these concepts, and the framework of causal mediation analysis, before I discuss some particular possibilities and pitfalls that are relevant to medication safety studies in pregnancy.