Practical aspects of sharing controls between case-control studies.
OBJECTIVE
We discuss the practical advantages and challenges of sharing controls among two or more concurrently conducted case-control studies.


METHODS
We conducted two case-control studies, one of breast cancer and the other of endometrial cancer, with overlapping, shared control groups. The studies had overlapping geographic areas, identical telephone questionnaires and biosample collection, and identical age and race eligibility.


RESULTS
Sharing controls reduced the number of potential controls that had to be identified by random-digit dialing by 25% and the number of eligible controls that had to be interviewed by 32%. The cost savings were approximately 2,96,000 dollars, or 7% of the program project that funded the studies.


CONCLUSIONS
The disadvantage of sharing controls was the complexity of the design and the additional investigator time required to plan, monitor, and adjust the design. In the situation presented here, the complexities would have been reduced greatly if we had not attempted to frequency match on age in both studies. Generally, sharing controls is likely to work well when strict frequency matching is not required and there is a large overlap of interview questions, other data to be collected, and eligibility criteria among the studies.
Bunin
Greta R
GR
Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA. bunin@email.chop.edu
Baumgarten
Mona
M
Norman
Sandra A
SA
Strom
Brian L
BL
Berlin
Jesse A
JA
D000368:Aged; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D035061:Control Groups; D017046:Cost Savings; D016889:Endometrial Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D004967:Estrogens / Q000378:metabolism; D005260:Female; D020249:Hormone Replacement Therapy / Q000009:adverse effects; D006801:Humans; D012106:Research / Q000191:economics; D012107:Research Design; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology
D004967:Estrogens