Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety
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Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf · Jun 2014
Proteinuria testing among patients with diabetes mellitus is associated with bladder cancer diagnosis: potential for unmeasured confounding in studies of pioglitazone and bladder cancer.
The observed association between pioglitazone and bladder cancer could be causal or because of bias in the design of prior studies. We hypothesize that proteinuria testing may lead to detection bias if routine test results for proteinuria lead to a full urinalysis. ⋯ Proteinuria testing may be a confounder in studies of pioglitazone and bladder cancer but does not fully explain the association between pioglitazone and bladder cancer in this cohort. Optimal adjustment for proteinuria testing likely requires knowledge of the test result.