Dtsch Arztebl Int
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Dtsch Arztebl Int
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Review
Mediation Analysis in Medical Research—Part 31 of a Series on Evaluation of Scientific Publications.
Mediation analysis addresses the question of the mechanisms by which an exposure causes an outcome. This article is intended to convey basic knowledge of statistical mediation analysis. ⋯ By decomposing the overall exposure effect into indirect and direct components, a mediation analysis can reveal not just whether an exposure causes an outcome, but also how. For a mediation analysis to be valid, however, multiple assumptions must be satisfied that cannot easily be checked, potentially compromising such analyses as compared to the estimation of an overall effect.