title: What do case-control studies estimate? Survey of methods and assumptions in published case-control research.
abstract: To evaluate strategies used to select cases and controls and how reported odds ratios are interpreted, the authors examined 150 case-control studies published in leading general medicine, epidemiology, and clinical specialist journals from 2001 to 2007. Most of the studies (125/150; 83%) were based on incident cases; among these, the source population was mostly dynamic (102/125; 82%). A minority (23/125; 18%) sampled from a fixed cohort. Among studies with incident cases, 105 (84%) could interpret the odds ratio as a rate ratio. Fifty-seven (46% of 125) required the source population to be stable for such interpretation, while the remaining 48 (38% of 125) did not need any assumptions because of matching on time or concurrent sampling. Another 17 (14% of 125) studies with incident cases could interpret the odds ratio as a risk ratio, with 16 of them requiring the rare disease assumption for this interpretation. The rare disease assumption was discussed in 4 studies but was not relevant to any of them. No investigators mentioned the need for a stable population. The authors conclude that in current case-control research, a stable exposure distribution is much more frequently needed to interpret odds ratios than the rare disease assumption. At present, investigators conducting case-control studies rarely discuss what their odds ratios estimate.
authors.affiliation: Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, P.O. Box 85500, 3508 GA Utrecht, the Netherlands. m.j.knol@umcutrecht.nl
authors.forename: Mirjam J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Knol
authors.forename: Jan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Vandenbroucke
authors.forename: Pippa
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Scott
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Egger
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D003663:Decision Trees; D004813:Epidemiology; D008511:Medicine; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013038:Specialization