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Potential Pitfall in Using Cumulative Exposure in Exposure-Response Relationships: Demonstration and Discussion
- Source :
- American Journal of Industrial Medicine. 28:41-47
- Publication Year :
- 1995
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 1995.
-
Abstract
- Cumulative exposure is frequently used as a measure of exposure in the quantitative analysis of epidemiologic studies. It is recognized that the imposed symmetry between duration and intensity of exposure is a potential problem with this measure, but it is less widely recognized that the finding of an exposure-response relationship, using cumulative exposure as the exposure metric, does not necessarily imply that exposures were accurately or even consistently estimated. This report describes a simulation study drawn from a nested case-control analysis of mesothelioma in a cohort of asbestos cement workers. Intensity of exposure in the range of 0.1-40 fibers/ml was randomly assigned to subjects. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that there was no association between mesothelioma risk and the randomly assigned intensity of exposure. However, in 171 (86%) of 200 trials, mesothelioma risk was significantly associated with cumulative exposure, even though intensity of exposure remained randomly assigned. A strong exposure-response relationship might thus be misleading. One would be more confident about quantitative risk assessment when there are a large number of independent studies available for analysis. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
- Subjects :
- Male
Mesothelioma
medicine.medical_specialty
Lung Neoplasms
Time Factors
Cumulative Exposure
Logistic regression
medicine.disease_cause
Risk Assessment
Asbestos
Random Allocation
Occupational Exposure
Epidemiology
medicine
Humans
Peritoneal Neoplasms
Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
business.industry
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Reproducibility of Results
medicine.disease
Asbestos cement
Surgery
Logistic Models
Research Design
Case-Control Studies
Cohort
business
Risk assessment
Demography
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 10970274 and 02713586
- Volume :
- 28
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- American Journal of Industrial Medicine
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....6c7e1d9e15bba036140c8e9658fc50e4