Concepts and pitfalls in measuring and interpreting attributable fractions, prevented fractions, and causation probabilities

Annals of Epidemiology

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 155-161

  Greenland, Sander ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Attributable fraction; Attributable risk; Causation; Etiologic fraction; Excess fraction; Preventable fraction; Prevented fraction; Public health; Years of life lost

Indexed keywords

AMBIGUITY; ARTICLE; ATTRIBUTABLE RISK; CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION; ETIOLOGIC FRACTION; HUMAN; LANGUAGE; POLICY; POPULATION; PRIORITY JOURNAL; PROBABILITY; PUBLIC HEALTH; SURVIVAL TIME; VALIDITY; EPIDEMIOLOGY; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS; THEORETICAL MODEL;

CAUSALITY; DATA INTERPRETATION, STATISTICAL; EPIDEMIOLOGIC METHODS; HUMANS; MODELS, THEORETICAL; PROBABILITY;

EID: 84923247388     PISSN: 10472797     EISSN: 18732585     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.annepidem.2014.11.005     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Levin M.L. The occurrence of lung cancer in man. Acta Unio Int Contra Cancrum 1953, 9:531-541.
2. Beyea J., Greenland S. The importance of specifying the underlying biologic model in estimating the probability of causation. Health Phys 1999, 76:269-274.
3. Cox L.A. Probability of causation and the attributable proportion of risk. Risk Anal 1984, 4(3):221-230.
4. Cox L.A. Statistical issues in the estimation of assigned shares for carcinogenesis liability. Risk Anal 1987, 7(1):71-80.
5. Greenland S. Bias in methods for deriving standardized morbidity ratios and attributable fraction estimates. Stat Med 1984, 3:131-141.
6. Greenland S. The relation of the probability of causation to the relative risk and the doubling dose: a methodologic error that has become a social problem. Am J Public Health 1999, 89:1166-1169.
7. Greenland S. Attributable fractions: bias from broad definition of exposure. Epidemiology 2001, 12:518-520.
8. Greenland S., Robins J. Conceptual problems in the definition and interpretation of attributable fractions. Am J Epidemiol 1988, 128:1185-1197.
9. Greenland S., Robins J.M. Epidemiology, justice, and the probability of causation. Jurimetrics 2000, 40:321-340.
10. Robins J.M., Greenland S. Estimability and estimation of excess and etiologic fractions. Stat Med 1989, 8:845-859.
11. Robins J.M., Greenland S. The probability of causation under a stochastic model for individual risks. Biometrics 1989, 45:1125-1138.
12. Robins J.M., Greenland S. Estimability and estimation of expected years of life lost due to a hazardous exposure. Stat Med 1991, 10:79-93.
13. Rockhill B., Newman B., Weinberg C. Use and misuse of population attributable fractions. Am J Public Health 1998, 88:15-19.
14. Suzuki E., Yamamoto E., Tsuda T. On the relations between excess fraction, attributable fraction, and etiologic fraction. Am J Epidemiol 2012, 175(6):567-575.
15. Benichou J. Areview of adjusted estimators of attributable risk. Stat Methods Med Res 2001, 10:195-216.
16. Benichou J., Gail M.H. Variance calculations and confidence intervals for estimates of the attributable risk based on logistic models. Biometrics 1990, 46:991-1003.
17. Bruzzi P., Green S.B., Byar D.P., Brinton L.A., Schairer C. Estimating the population attributable risk for multiple risk factors using case-control data. Am J Epidemiol 1985, 122:904-914.
18. Drescher K., Becher H. Estimating the generalized attributable fraction from case-control data. Biometrics 1997, 53:1170-1176.
19. Graham P. Bayesian inference for a generalized population attributable fraction. Stat Med 2000, 19:937-956.
20. Greenland S., Drescher K. Maximum-likelihood estimation of attributable fractions from logistic models. Biometrics 1993, 49:865-872.
21. Morgenstern H., Bursic E.S. Amethod for using epidemiologic data to estimate the potential impact of an intervention on the health status of a target population. JCommunity Health 1982, 7:292-309.
22. Oja H., Alho O.P., Läärä E. Model-based estimation of the excess fraction (attributable fraction): day care and middle ear infection. Stat Med 1996, 15:1519-1534.
23. Modern epidemiology 2008, Lippincott-Williams-Wilkins, Philadelphia. 3rd ed. K.J. Rothman, S. Greenland, T.L. Lash (Eds.).
24. Taguri M., Matsuyama Y., Ohashi Y., Harada A., Ueshima H. Doubly robust estimation of the generalized impact fraction. Biostatistics 2012, 13(3):455-467.
25. VanderWeele T.J. Attributable fractions for sufficient cause interactions. Int J Biostat 2010, 6(2). Article 5.
26. VanderWeele T.J. Reconsidering the denominator of the attributable proportion for additive interaction. Eur J Epidemiol 2013, 28:779-784.
27. VanderWeele T.J., Tchetgen Tchetgen E. Attributing effects to interactions. Epidemiology 2014, 25(5):711-722.
28. Walker A.M. Proportion of disease attributable to the combined effect of two factors. Int J Epidemiol 1981, 10:81-85.
29. Walter S.D. The estimation and interpretation of attributable risk in health research. Biometrics 1976, 32:829-849.
30. Walter S.D. Calculation of attributable risks from epidemiological data. Int J Epidemiol 1978, 7:175-182.
31. Walter S.D. Prevention for multifactorial diseases. Am J Epidemiol 1980, 112:409-416.
32. Greenland S. Choosing sensible effect measures for practice and policy. JClin Epidemiol 2003, 56:392-393.
33. Greenland S. Epidemiologic measures and policy formulation: lessons frompotential outcomes (with discussion). Emerg Themes Epidemiol 2005, 2:1-4.
34. Hernán M.A. Hypothetical interventions to define causal effects-afterthought or prerequisite?. Am J Epidemiol 2005, 162:618-620.
35. Joffe M.M. Principal stratification and attribution prohibition: good ideas taken too far. Int J Biostat 2011, 7(1). Article 35.
36. Robins J.M., Greenland S. Comment on "Causal inference without counterfactuals.". JAm Stat Assoc 2000, 95:477-478.
37. Vanderweele T.J. Concerning the consistency assumption in causal inference. Epidemiology 2009, 20:880-883.
38. VanderWeele T.J., Hernán M.A. Causal effects and natural laws: towards a conceptualization of causal counterfactuals for non-manipulable exposures. Causal inference: statistical perspectives and applications 2012, 43-58. Wiley, Chichester, UK. C. Berzuini, A.P. Dawid, L. Bernardinelli (Eds.).
39. Westreich D. From exposures to population interventions: pregnancy and response to HIV therapy. Am J Epidemiol 2014, 179(7):797-806.
40. Darrow L.A., Steenland N.K. Confounding and bias in the attributable fraction. Epidemiology 2011, 22:53-58.
41. Steenland K., Armstrong B. An overview of methods for calculating the burden of disease due to specific risk factors. Epidemiology 2006, 17:512-519.
42. Wacholder S., Benichou J., Heineman E.F., Hartge P., Hoover R.N. Attributable risk: advantages of a broad definition of exposure. Am J Epidemiol 1994, 140:303-309.
43. Walter S.D. Effects of interaction, confounding, and observational error on attributable risk estimation. Am J Epidemiol 1983, 117:598-604.
44. Walter S.D., Hsieh C.C., Liu Q. Effect of exposure misclassification on the mean squared error of population attributable risk and prevented fraction estimates. Stat Med 2007, 26:4833-4842.
45. Poole C. You're going to do what? (abstract). Am J Epidemiol 2009, 169(Suppl):S38.
46. MacMahon B., Pugh T.F. Epidemiology: principles and methods 1970, Little Brown and Company, Boston.
47. Miettinen O.S. Proportion of disease caused or prevented by a given exposure, trait, or intervention. Am J Epidemiol 1974, 99:325-332.
48. Deubner D.C., Wilkinson W.E., Helms M.J., Tyroler H.A., Hames C.G. Logistic model estimation of death attributable to risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Evans County, Georgia. Am J Epidemiol 1980, 112:135-143.
49. Greenland S. Introduction to regression models. Chapter 20. Modern epidemiology 2008, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia. 3rd ed. K.J. Rothman, S. Greenland, T.L. Lash (Eds.).
50. Joffe M.M., Greenland S. Standardized estimates from categorical regression models. Stat Med 1995, 14:2131-2141.
51. Greenland S. Estimating population attributable fractions from fitted incidence ratios and exposure survey data, with an application to electromagnetic fields and childhood leukemia. Biometrics 2001, 57:182-188.
52. Keiding N., Vaeth M. Calculating expected mortality. Stat Med 1986, 5:327-334.
53. Cox D.R., Oakes D. Analysis of survival data 1984, Chapman and Hall, New York.
54. Slud E.V., Byar D.P. How dependent causes of death can make risk factors appear protective. Biometrics 1988, 44:265-269.
55. Slud E.V., Byar D.P., Schatzkin A. Dependent competing risks and the latent-failure model. Biometrics 1988, 44:1203-1204.
56. Prentice R.L., Kalbfleisch J.D. Author's reply. Biometrics 1988, 44:1205.
57. Deubner D.C., Tyroler H.A., Cassel J.C., Hames C.G., Becker C. Attributable risk, population attributable risk, and population attributable fraction of death associated with hypertension in a biracial population. Circulation 1975, 52:910-918.
58. Ouellet B.L., Roemeder J.-M., Lance J.-M. Premature mortality attributable to smoking and hazardous drinking in Canada. Am J Epidemiol 1979, 109:451-463.
59. Greenland S., Robins J.M., Pearl J. Confounding and collapsibility in causal inference. Stat Sci 1999, 14:29-46.
60. Boshuizen H., Greenland S. Average age at first occurrence as an alternative occurrence parameter in epidemiology. Int J Epidemiol 1997, 26:867-872.
61. Hoffmann K., Heidemann C., Weikert C., Schulze M.B., Boeing H. Estimating the proportion of disease due to classes of sufficient causes. Am J Epidemiol 2006, 163(1):76-83.
62. Hoffmann K., Flanders W.D. Re: "Estimating the proportion of disease due to classes of sufficient causes" [letter]. Am J Epidemiol 2006, 164(12):1254-1255.
63. Hernán M.A., VanderWeele T.J. Compound treatments and transportability of causal inference. Epidemiology 2011, 22(3):368-377.