Ascertainment of Incident Cancer by US Population-Based Cancer Registries Versus Self-Reports and Death Certificates in a Nationwide Cohort Study, the US Radiologic Technologists Study
AbstractFollow-up of US cohort members for incident cancer is time-consuming, is costly, and often results in underascertainment when the traditional methods of self-reporting and/or medical record validation are used. We conducted one of the first large-scale investigations to assess the feasibility, methods, and benefits of linking participants in the US Radiologic Technologists (USRT) Study (n = 146,022) with the majority of US state or regional cancer registries. Follow-up of this cohort has relied primarily on questionnaires (mailed approximately every 10 years) and linkage with the National Death Index. We compared...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - July 22, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Correction to: “parametric-regression–based causal mediation analysis of binary outcomes and binary mediators: moving beyond the rareness or commonness of the outcome”
In the article “Parametric-Regression–Based Causal Mediation Analysis of Binary Outcomes and Binary Mediators: Moving Beyond the Rareness or Commonness of the Outcome” by Samoilenko and Lefebvre (1), there were errors in the SAS macromediation_estimates. These errors were identified recently while developing our R packageExactMed (2) and are now corrected in the new SAS macro we provided in the Web Appendix (which is an updated version of Web Appendix 3 from our original article). (Source: American Journal of Epidemiology)
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - July 12, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
What Structural Racism Is (or Is Not) and How to Measure It: Clarity for Public Health and Medical Researchers
AbstractInterest in studying structural racism ’s impacts on health has grown exponentially in recent years. Across these studies, there is much heterogeneity in the definition and measurement of structural racism, leading to mixed interpretations of structural racism’s impact on health. A precise definition of structural racism can offer co nceptual clarity to inform what mechanisms to investigate and is imperative for conducting high-quality research on it and dismantling it. In this commentary, we trace the evolution of the definitions of structural racism and suggest ways in which the measurement of structural raci...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - July 5, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
A Framework for Descriptive Epidemiology
AbstractIn this paper, we propose a framework for thinking through the design and conduct of descriptive epidemiologic studies. A well-defined descriptive question aims to quantify and characterize some feature of the health of a population and must clearly state: 1) the target population, characterized by person and place, and anchored in time; 2) the outcome, event, or health state or characteristic; and 3) the measure of occurrence that will be used to summarize the outcome (e.g., incidence, prevalence, average time to event, etc.). Additionally, 4) any auxiliary variables will be prespecified and their roles as stratif...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - July 1, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Birth Cohort Effects in Breast Cancer Incidence: Global Patterns and Trends
AbstractBreast cancer is the most common neoplasm in the world among women. The age-specific incidences and onset ages vary widely between Asian and Western countries/regions. Invasive breast cancer cases among women from 1997 to 2011 were abstracted from the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Taiwan Cancer Registry. Age-period-cohort analysis was performed to examine the trends. The cohort effect was prominent in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand, possibly related to the timing of westernization. The risk of breast cancer initially rose with the birth cohorts in Hong Kong and India (both former Bri...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - July 1, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
A Novel Curriculum Review Process for Initiating the Incorporation of Antiracist Principles Into Epidemiology Course Work
AbstractThere is growing acknowledgement of the legacy of White supremacy and racism in the discipline of epidemiology. Our department in the University of Washington School of Public Health undertook a systematic effort to begin addressing institutionalized racism and inclusive teaching in our courses. In July 2020, we introduced a new tool (the “Course Development Plan” (CDP)) to advance our curriculum. The CDP includes 2 components: 1) a guideline document that provides strategies on how to modify curricula and classroom teaching to incorporate antiracism and principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI); and...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - June 11, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Comparative Effectiveness of Direct-Acting Antivirals for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Veterans Affairs Patients With Hepatitis C Virus Infection
AbstractWe recently conducted an exploratory study that indicated that several direct-acting antivirals (DAAs), highly effective medications for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, were also associated with improvement in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among a national cohort of US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) patients treated between October 1, 1999, and September 30, 2019. Limiting the same cohort to patients with PTSD and HCV, we compared the associations of individual DAAs with PTSD symptom improvement using propensity score weighting. After identifying patients who had available baseline and endpoint PTSD ...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - June 11, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Benchmarking Observational Analyses Before Using Them to Address Questions Trials Do Not Answer: An Application to Coronary Thrombus Aspiration
AbstractTo increase confidence in the use of observational analyses when addressing effectiveness questions beyond those addressed by randomized trials, one can first benchmark the observational analyses against existing trial results. We used Swedish registry data to emulate a target trial similar to the Thrombus Aspiration in ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction in Scandinavia (TASTE) randomized trial, which found no difference in the risk of death or myocardial infarction by 1 year with or without thrombus aspiration among individuals with ST-elevation myocardial infarction. We benchmarked the emulation against the trial ...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - May 31, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Invited Commentary: The Use of Population Attributable Fractions in Studies of Vaccine Hesitancy
AbstractVaccine hesitancy —the delay or refusal of vaccines despite their availability—has been linked to lower vaccination rates and outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Using cross-sectional surveys of 78,725 parents and other family members in the United States, Nguyen et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2022;191(9):1626-1635) calculated the population attributable fraction (PAF) of vaccine hesitancy on nonreceipt of recommended childhood vaccines, including influenza vaccine. The PAF is readily calculated:p(rr− 1)/rr, wherep is the proportion of those hesitant among nonvaccinated individuals, andrr is the risk ratio of...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - May 19, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Effects of Adolescent-Focused Integrated Social Protection on Depression: A Pragmatic Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial of Tanzania ’s Cash Plus Intervention
We examined intervention impacts on a depressive symptoms scale (10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale score (range, 0–30)) and rates of depressive symptomatology (score ≥10 points on the scale), recorded at study baseline (April–June 2017), midline (May–July 2018), and endline (June–August 2019). Using intention-to-treat methodology, we employed logistic and generalized linear models to e stimate effects for binary and continuous outcomes, respectively. Quantile regression was used to estimate effects across the scale. From 2,458 baseline participants, 941 intervention and 992 control adolesc...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - May 17, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Zhong et al. Respond to “There’s No Place Like Home”
We appreciate the comments by Hauptman et al. (1) highlighting the challenges in understanding how environmental exposures and their inequities contribute to sleep disruptions. The recent interest in how sleep, and the lack thereof, affects human health has led several large cohort studies, such as the California Teachers Study, to include such questions in follow-up questionnaires. We agree with Hauptman et al. that racial equity issues indeed require further interrogation than present in our study (2); even in in our cohort, non-Hispanic White participants experienced lower levels of artificial light at night (ALAN), noi...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - May 6, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Invited Commentary: There ’s No Place Like Home—Integrating a Place-Based Approach to Understanding Sleep
AbstractLight exposure at night impedes sleep and shifts the circadian clock. An extensive body of literature has linked sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment with cardiac disease, cancer, mental health disorders, and other chronic illnesses, as well as more immediate risks, such as motor vehicle crashes and occupational injuries. In this issue of theJournal, Zhong et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2022;191(9):1532 –1539) build on this literature, finding that in a cohort of 50,000 California teachers, artificial light at night, noise, green space, and air pollution were all associated with sleep disturbances. Light, noise,...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - May 6, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Data-Adaptive Selection of the Propensity Score Truncation Level for Inverse-Probability –Weighted and Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimators of Marginal Point Treatment Effects
We present a simple truncation strategy based on the sample size,n, that sets the upper bound on IP weights at $\sqrt{\textit{n}}$ ln n/5. For TMLE, the lower bound on the PS should be set to 5/($\sqrt{\textit{n}}$ ln n/5). Our strategy was designed to optimize the mean squared error of the parameter estimate. It naturally extends to data structures with missing outcomes. Simulation studies and a data analysis demonstrate our strategy ’s ability to minimize both bias and mean squared error in comparison with other common strategies, including the popular but flawed quantile-based heuristic. (Source: American Journal of Epidemiology)
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - May 4, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
A practical algorithm for extracting multiple data samples from google trends extended for health
Research using Google Trends (GT) data has proliferated (1–3) since 2009 (4), mostly using data from the public-facing website (GT-W,https://trends.google.com), despite the availability of better quality data through the Google Trends Extended for Health API (GT-E), which returns raw probabilities, unlike GT-W ’s scaled values. (Source: American Journal of Epidemiology)
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - May 4, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
Adherence to 5 Diet Quality Indices and Pancreatic Cancer Risk in a Large US Prospective Cohort
AbstractFew prospective studies have examined associations between diet quality and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), or comprehensively compared diet quality indices. We conducted a prospective analysis of adherence to the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2015, alternative HEI-2010, alternate Mediterranean diet (aMed), and 2 versions of Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH; Fung and Mellen) and PDAC within the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-AARP Diet and Health Study (United States, 1995 –2011). The dietary quality indices were calculated using responses from a 124-item food frequency questionnaire comple...
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology - April 26, 2022 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research
