American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access published online on September 17, 2007
American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwm234
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Practice of Epidemiology |
The Impact of Truncation and Missing Family Links in Population-based Registers on Familial Risk Estimates
From the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Correspondence to Dr. Marie Reilly, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Novels väg 12A/Box 281, SE171 77, Stockholm, Sweden (e-mail: marie.reilly{at}ki.se).
Received for publication April 2, 2007. Accepted for publication July 27, 2007.
Family history information is often incomplete in population-based disease registers because of truncation and/or missing family links. In this study, the authors simulated complete populations of related individuals with realistic age, family structure, and incidence rates. After mimicking the realities of register-based data, such as left truncation of family history and missing family links due to death, the authors explored recovery of familial association parameters from standard epidemiologic models. Truncation of family history produced almost no bias for a familial risk of 2 and 50 years of follow-up, but it had a dramatic impact when the familial risk was 10. The age distribution of disease and the magnitude of background incidence rates also affected family history loss and thus the magnitude of bias. One can safeguard against bias by starting follow-up later, with the number of registration years to be ignored in the analysis depending on the value of familial risk. The missing familial links due to death had no effect, except when there was differential mortality for cases with and without a family history of disease. In summary, truncation, and to a lesser extent missing family links, induces bias in familial risk estimates from population-based registers.
bias (epidemiology); familial risk; medical record linkage; missing data; registries
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  M. Leu, K. Czene, and M. Reilly Bias correction of estimates of familial risk from population-based cohort studies Int. J. Epidemiol., October 13, 2009; (2009) dyp304v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 M. Leu, M. Reilly, and K. Czene Evaluation of Bias in Familial Risk Estimates: A Study of Common Cancers Using Swedish Population-based Registers J Natl Cancer Inst, September 17, 2008; 100(18): 1318 - 1325. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
P. Rebora, K. Czene, and M. Reilly Timing of Familial Breast Cancer in Sisters J Natl Cancer Inst, May 21, 2008; 100(10): 721 - 727. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|