Methods to estimate proportion and number of nonexposed cases in a population.
dose-response
epidemiology
semi-continuous variable
spike at zero
Journal
Biometrical journal. Biometrische Zeitschrift
ISSN: 1521-4036
Titre abrégé: Biom J
Pays: Germany
ID NLM: 7708048
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
03 2021
03 2021
Historique:
received:
29
06
2019
revised:
09
09
2020
accepted:
11
09
2020
pubmed:
6
11
2020
medline:
16
10
2021
entrez:
5
11
2020
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
National mortality statistics commonly provide disease-specific absolute and relative frequencies of death by sex and age, but not by exposure status. However, it is often of interest to know how many of the diseased individuals, that is the cases, were exposed or not exposed to a specific risk factor. We present two methods to estimate the proportion and the number of exposed and nonexposed cases, both of which require an estimate of the exposure prevalence in the nondiseased population. Method I additionally requires an estimate of the relative effect of exposure, that is a relative risk function if the exposure has a continuous distribution, or a relative risk estimate for each category if the exposure is categorical. Method II additionally requires an estimate of the disease rate among the nonexposed. We provide theoretical justifications, discuss practical limitations, and provide an R script to calculate the probability for nonexposure among the diseased, and compare the approaches. Both methods are subsequently applied to the estimation of the number of never smokers among lung cancer deaths. The two suggested methods rely on the availability of specific data sources and might therefore be applicable in different research settings. Both methods yield unbiased estimates of the number of nonexposed cases, given that the respective underlying assumptions are fulfilled.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33150987
doi: 10.1002/bimj.201900190
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
514-527Informations de copyright
© 2020 The Authors. Biometrical Journal published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.
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