Abstract #301084

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JSM 2003 Abstract #301084
Activity Number: 177
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2003 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
Abstract - #301084
Title: Using Pooled Exposure Assessment to Improve Efficiency in Case-control Studies
Author(s): Clarice R. Weinberg*+ and David M. Umbach
Companies: NIEHS and National Institute of Environmental Health Science
Address: PO Box 12233, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709-2233,
Keywords: biomarkers ; case-control design ; efficiency ; group testing ; pooling
Abstract:

Assays can be so expensive that interesting hypotheses become impractical to study epidemiologically. One need not, however, perform an assay for everyone providing a biologic specimen. We propose pooling equal-volume aliquots from randomly grouped sets of cases and randomly grouped sets of controls, and then assaying the smaller number of pooled samples. If an effect modifier is of concern, the pooling can be done within strata defined by that variable. For covariates assessed on individuals (e.g., questionnaire data), set-based counterparts are calculated by adding the values for the individuals in each set. The pooling set then becomes the unit of statistical analysis. We show that, with appropriate specification of a set-based logistic model, standard software yields a valid estimated exposure odds ratio, provided the multiplicative formulation is correct. Pooling minimizes depletion of irreplaceable biologic specimens and can enable additional exposures to be studied economically. Statistical power suffers very little compared to the usual, individual-based analysis.

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