Estimation with vanishing baseline risk

Details

• Personal Author:
  Park RM
• Description:
  Diseases associated with specific exposures may have little or no observable background rate in the absence of the exposure. Examples include mesothelioma (environmental asbestos), aplastic anemia (benzene), bronchiolitis obliterans (artificial butter flavorings), Reye's syndrome (aspirin in children), and angiosarcoma of the liver (vinyl chloride). Relative-rate models of exposure-response produce unstable near-zero baseline risk and unbounded coefficients, especially when age confounding requires baseline age dependence. The same problem arises in a proportional-hazards context. Baseline risk volatility also threatens meta-analyses, a procedure that assumes uniformity. Using Poisson regression, we investigated two methods: (1) fixing the intercept at a small value corresponding to 1% of attributable cases and (2) generating random sets of new cases across observation time independent of any predictor, possibly preempting true cases. Although models can be reliably fit using randomly generated cases, repetition would reduce variability in parameter estimates. The two treatments for vanishing baseline yield equivalent results demonstrating that simply fixing the intercept is entirely adequate. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Environmental Monitoring Occupational Health Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety
• Keywords:
  Analytical-processes Diseases Exposure-assessment Mathematical-models Risk-analysis Risk-factors Statistical-analysis Statistical-quality-control
• ISSN:
  1044-3983
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  EID - Education and Information Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  23
• Issue:
  6
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20041639
• Citation:
  Epidemiology 2012 Nov; 23(6):937-938
• Contact Point Address:
  Robert M. Park, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Education and Information Division, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45226
• Email:
  rhp9@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2013
• NORA Priority Area:
  Construction ; Mining
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Epidemiology
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:af848338ae3a3a64bf68ebc98cb13fa6a4cebe8c3aacdfa37e54cf7facd61ad83c15aefef823e8ea40c79c0b0fa66c9b51a58e862a5fbcdabef32b41a53df170
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/194141/cdc_194141_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 87.79 KB ]