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I'm trying to interpret what exactly the odds ratio is telling me here.

3 proteins are analyzed to describe contracting alzheimers disease.

Protein1 appears (From scientific data) to reduce the risk Protein2 appears to have no effect Protein3 appears to increase the risk of alzheimers

Now, if I get an odds-ratio of .5 for protein 1 vs protein2, what does this tell me? Protein 1 has an increased risk for developing alzheimers or decreased risk for developing alzheimers?

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  • $\begingroup$ You need to clarify what these odds ratios are. An odds ratio compares the odds under two different sets of circumstances so your first set of examples are presumably comparing the presence of each protein with the absence of that protein.It would be good if you can clarify that. But what meaning does the statement in your question have? $\endgroup$
    – mdewey
    Commented Oct 7, 2017 at 12:46

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decreased. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds_ratio. But I am not sure the question you posed is clear: usually, one looks at the odds ratio on developing alzheimers for each of the three proteins.

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Have you looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds_ratio?

There's a table that is very similar to your question:

enter image description here

Exposed/not exposed will be protein 1 and 2 for you.

You can think like: the probability of contracting alzheimers disease is half less likely with protein 1 than protein 2. In other words, the risk of contracting the disease is less with protein 1 than protein 2.

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