NEW APPROACHES TO CROSS SECTIONAL STUDIES OF ASTHMA

描述：(改编自《调查员摘要》) 提议，首席调查员，一名生物统计学家，将与 建立了流行病学、职业医学和 工业卫生，制定和提炼应对的学习方法 选择偏见严重限制了我们准确研究的能力 工作场所的哮喘。先前对金属加工的横断面研究 体液(MWF)和哮喘患有有据可查的偏差，原因是 健康工作者效应(HWE)和关于健康工人模式的稀疏信息 自从工作以来就有哮喘。然而，MWF与哮喘之间的联系已经足够好了 由临床证据证实值得进一步检查 暴露-反应关系。要解决早期版本中的缺陷 研究中，横断面样本将通过预先添加 被排除在外的女性，额外的黑人，以及来自新队列的新员工 3000名汽车工人；以及哮喘事件的具体时间信息- 疾病的初始发作和恶化-将通过以下方式收集 邮寄的调查问卷。这项分析将通过以下方式解释工作转移偏见 使用时间窗口重新定义暴露在更具生物学相关性的 并将应用COX比例风险模型来估计 横截面和队列。为数据开发的新方法 收集和分析将提供必要的研究经验 在职业卫生领域确立调查员的职业生涯， 改进在工作横断面研究中研究哮喘的技术 以及进一步加深我们对人类之间关系的理解 哮喘和MWF。

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from the Investigator's Abstract) In this SERCA proposal, the principal investigator, a biostatistician, will work with an established team of researchers in epidemiology, occupational medicine, and industrial hygiene, to develop and refine study methods to deal with selection biases that have severely limited our ability to accurately study asthma in the workplace. A previous cross-sectional study of metalworking fluids (MWF) and asthma suffered from well documented biases due to the healthy worker effect (HWE) and sparse information about the pattern of asthma since employment. However, the MWF-asthma link is well enough established by clinical evidence to merit further examination of the exposure-response relationship. To address shortcomings in the earlier study, the cross-sectional sample will be expanded by adding previously excluded females, additional blacks, and new hires to from a new cohort of 3000 autoworkers; and time specific information about asthmatic events - both initial onset of disease as well as exacerbation - will be collected by a mailed questionnaire. The analysis will account for job transfer bias by using time windows to redefine exposure in a more biologically relevant manner and will apply a Cox proportional hazards model to estimate risk in both the cross-section and the cohort. The new methods developed for data collection and analysis will provide the research experience necessary to establish the investigator's career in the occupational health field, improve techniques for studying asthma in cross-sectional studies of working populations, and further our understanding of the relationship between asthma and MWF.