Scandinavian journal of public health
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Scand J Public Health · Jul 2017
Using fathers as a negative control exposure to test the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Hypothesis: A case study on maternal distress and offspring asthma using Swedish register data.
Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Hypothesis (DOHaD) studies are often observational in nature and are therefore prone to biases from loss to follow-up and unmeasured confounding. Register-based studies can reduce these issues since they allow almost complete follow-up and provide information on fathers that can be used in a negative control analysis to assess the impact of unmeasured confounding. ⋯ Using paternal exposure in a negative control model to test the robustness of fetal programming hypotheses can be a relatively simple extension of conventional observational studies but limitations need to be considered.
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Scand J Public Health · Jul 2017
ReviewTowards non-conventional methods of designing register-based epidemiological studies: An application to pediatric research.
Various epidemiological designs have been applied to investigate the causes and consequences of fetal growth restriction in register-based observational studies. This review seeks to provide an overview of several conventional designs, including cohort, case-control and more recently applied non-conventional designs such as family-based designs. We also discuss some practical points regarding the application and interpretation of family-based designs. ⋯ We conclude that there is a broader need for family-based design in observational research as evidenced by the meaningful contributions to the understanding of the potential causal association between low birth weight and subsequent outcomes.