检出偏倚:不同研究设计的结构分析

Detection bias:structural analysis of different study designs

检出偏倚是一种常见的信息偏倚,在Horwitz绝经后服用雌激素与子宫内膜癌之间的关联研究中首次被提出,并广泛地存在于各类流行病学研究中。本文应用有向无环图,分析暴露-结局间的效应,并以测量的暴露-测量的结局间的关联来估计;检出偏倚的产生,实质上是从测量的暴露至测量的结局之间存在着的额外的、与研究兴趣无关的开放路径所致。通过对不同研究设计如队列研究、随机对照临床试验和病例对照研究等进行具体分析,了解检出偏倚的产生机制及其对效应估计(或关联)的可能影响。

Detection bias is an information bias.It was first proposed by Horwitz from the study investigating the association of the administration of estrogen after menopause with the occurrence of endometrial cancer,which still prevails in most epidemiological studies.We use the Directed Acyclic Graph to analyze the effect of a given exposure on a specific outcome with the association estimates between the measured exposure and outcome.Detection bias occurs when there is additional open paths irrelevant to the target path of interest which is originated from measured exposure to measured outcome.We further analyzed how the detection bias was formed under different study designs,including cohort study,randomized clinical trial and case-control study in order to further investigate its potential influence on the effect/association estimation.