Case control studies Flashcards
What is a case control study?
A case-control study is an epidemiological study that is often used to identify risk factors for a medical condition. This type of study compares a group of patients who have that condition with a group of patients that do not have it, and looks back in time to see how the characteristics of the two groups differ.
What is involved in a cohort study?
identify individuals with a disease (case)
identify similar individuals without the disease (control)
determine previous exposure
relate information on exposure to disease
What is the problem of case control studies?
source of cases and controls
Why is the source of cases important?
needs to representative of all people with the disease of interest
Why is the source of controls important?
needs to be in the same population as cases
if hospital based then ensure that they are not also related to exposure of interest
Give examples for a source of controls?
patients in hospitals for other conditions
visitors to hospital
GP practices
Why is matching required?
know about potential confounders e.g. age/gender
not interested in examining the association of these confounders
How is matching carry out?
matching means it is difficult to recruit controls
if using GP register then you can select by age and sex
What is undermatching?
cases and controls are not similar enough
e.g. age cases may be older and more likely to smoke which may have nothing to do with the disease being investigated
What is overmatching?
cases and controls may be too similar
e.g siblings
What bias can occur in case control studies?
recall bias
reverse causality
selection of cases
selection of controls
What is recall bias?
cases may remember more than controls
Recall bias is when a person’s recall of their exposure to a suspected disease risk factor could be influenced by the knowledge that they are now suffering from that particular disease. For example someone who has suffered a heart attack may recall having a highly stressed job. The stress that they now report experiencing may now be subtly different than the stress they would have reported at the time, before they developed the disease.
What is reverse causality?
disease may cause changes in recent exposures
e.g if diagnosed with lung cancer then the patient may stop smoking
What is a nested case control study?
A nested case-control study is a special type of case-control study in which ‘cases’ of a disease are drawn for the same cohort (population of people) as the controls to whom they are compared.
Use a big cohort and look at who develops the disease. Then select those who didn’t develop the disease (control) and look at the difference in the serum samples of those who developed the disease and the controls
What is the advantage of a nested case control study?
cheap, quick and easy
exposure is before the disease
