Assessment of ecologic regression in the study of lung cancer and indoor radon.
Assessment of ecologic regression in the study of lung cancer and indoor radon.
复制标题
肺癌和室内氡研究中的生态回归评估。
DOI：
10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a116999
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发表时间：
1994
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Samet,JM
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Stidley,CA;Samet,JM
为评估室内氡对普通人群的致癌风险而进行的回归分析研究受到方法学的限制，并且它们给出了似乎相互矛盾的结果。作者使用模拟来检查影响这些研究的两个主要方法问题的影响，测量误差和错误的风险模型。在一项模拟研究中，测量误差的影响所造成的抽样过程中，用于估计氡暴露的地理单元，氡的影响和影响估计的标准误差被低估，与较小的样本量更大的偏差。在另一项模拟研究中，该研究讨论了吸烟造成的不受控制的混淆的后果，即使县几何平均年氡暴露量与吸烟者比例之间存在很小的负相关性，也会导致氡效应的负平均估计值。第三项研究考虑了当肺癌和氡暴露之间的真实潜在模型关系是非线性时，使用简单线性生态模型的后果。这些例子量化了潜在的偏差，并证明了肺癌和室内氡的生态研究估计风险的局限性。
Ecologic regression studies conducted to assess the cancer risk of indoor radon to the general population are subject to methodological limitations, and they have given seemingly contradictory results. The authors use simulations to examine the effects of two major methodological problems that affect these studies measurement error and misspecification of the risk model. In a simulation study of the effect of measurement error caused by the sampling process used to estimate radon exposure for a geographic unit, both the effect of radon and the standard error of the effect estimate were underestimated, with greater bias for smaller sample sizes. In another simulation study, which addressed the consequences of uncontrolled confounding by cigarette smoking, even small negative correlations between county geometric mean annual radon exposure and the proportion of smokers resulted in negative average estimates of the radon effect. A third study considered consequences of using simple linear ecologic models when the true underlying model relation between lung cancer and radon exposure is nonlinear. These examples quantify potential biases and demonstrate the limitations of estimating risks from ecologic studies of lung cancer and indoor radon.