244 Results Found

Sample size calculation for adequate power analysis is critical in optimizing RNA-seq experimental design. However, the complexity increases for directly estimating sample size when taking into consideration confounding covariates. Although a number...

Estimating the effects of an intervention from high-dimensional observational data is a challenging problem due to the existence of confounding. The task is often further complicated in healthcare applications where a set of observations may be entir...

Background: Causality has recently been suggested to associate early childhood caries with psychomotor deficiency in preschoolers, where their causal interactions via other risk determinants remain unclear. Methods: To analyze such causality, we rand...

Intestinal dysbiosis has been widely documented in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) and is thought to influence the onset and perpetuation of gut inflammation. However, it remains unclear whether such bacterial changes rely in part on the modificat...

Controlling for confounding bias is crucial in causal inference. Causal inference using data from observational studies (e.g., electronic health records) or imperfectly randomized trials (e.g., imperfect randomization or compliance) requires accounti...

We aimed to compare the ability to balance baseline covariates and explore the impact of residual confounding between conventional and machine learning approaches to derive propensity scores (PS). The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service da...

Without randomization of treatments, valid inference of treatment effects from observational studies requires controlling for all confounders because the treated subjects generally differ systematically from the control subjects. Confounding control...

Introduction: The relation between physical well-being and chronic pain is complex and involves several subjective and objective covariates. We aimed to assess the role of mediator, confounder, or interactor played by covariates, including sleep qual...

Relative to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with privacy and ethical concerns, observational studies are becoming dominant in education research. In an observational study, it is necessary and important to correctly evaluate the effects of differ...

We sought to assess whether previous findings regarding the relationship between cognitive ability and religiosity could be replicated in a large dataset of online daters (maximum n = 67k). We found that self-declared religious people had lower IQs t...

In this paper, we discuss the statistical inference of interval-censored recurrence event data under an informative observation process. We establish an additive semiparametric mean model for the recurrence event process. Since the observation proces...

This study examines variability across the age span in cognitive performance in a cross-sectional, population-based, adult lifespan cohort from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) study (n = 2680). A key question we highlight i...

Objectives: Fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption has been inversely associated with cardiovascular disease, but questions remain about the extent to which these results are due to confounding. Methods: From 2006–2010, >0.5 million adults age...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of inappropriate therapy in adult patients with community-acquired pyelonephritis caused by Escherichia coli receiving empirical treatment with cefuroxime during hospital stay and readmission. A retros...

The critical level of ozone flux for forest trees is based entirely on biomass data from fumigation experiments with saplings, mostly in open-top chambers. Extrapolation to mature forests asks, therefore, for validation, which may be performed by epi...

Background: In a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with binary outcome the estimate of the marginal treatment effect can be biased by prognostic baseline covariates adjustment. Methods that target the marginal odds ratio, allowing for improved precis...

This study examined the association between television (TV) viewing and cognitive dysfunction in elderly Koreans. Among participants of the 2014 National Survey of Older Koreans, 9644 were considered in this study. To better identify the association...

Previous research on the association between cesarean section (CS) and childhood obesity has yielded inconsistent findings. This study assessed the secular trend of CS and explored the relationship between CS and the risks of overweight and obesity i...

Haphazard intentional sampling is a method developed by our research group for two main purposes: (i) sampling design, where the interest is to select small samples that accurately represent the general population regarding a set of covariates of int...

Platelets are a primary source of pro- and anti-angiogenic cytokines. However, the evidence of their role in retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is controversial. This retrospective study aimed to compare mean weekly platelet counts between infants with...

This study determines whether surrounding greenness is associated with the incidence of type 2 diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) in Taiwan. A retrospective cohort study determines the relationship between surrounding greenness and the incidence of T2DM during...

In this study, we attempted to find genetic variants affecting gene expression (eQTL = expression Quantitative Trait Loci) in the human placenta in normal and pathological situations. The analysis of gene expression in placental diseases (Pre-eclamps...

We aimed to assess the relationships of functional thyroid disease and thyroiditis with subsequent thyroid cancer, which is controversial due to various confounders, and the effect of thyroid disease workup on this association. We used the cohort dat...

Objective: To evaluate whether the season of birth and sex are associated with preferences for bedtime among Chinese adults. Methods: A national population-based study on sleep preferences was conducted among Chinese in 2008. A questionnaire was used...

Background: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) has been associated with a higher Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) mortality, both in hospitalized patients and in the general population. A possible beneficial effect of metformin on the prognosis of COVID-19 has...

Recent research suggests that cognitive deficits in individuals with psychotic disorders could be overestimated because poor cognitive test performance is partly attributable to non-cognitive factors. To further test this, we included non-hospitalize...

Background: This study investigates the survival outcomes of individuals with HIV receiving different treatment regimens compared to a control group. Utilizing a cohort dataset with demographic and clinical information, this research aims to assess t...

This retrospective cohort study was done to investigate the incidence of hypertension and its relation to the fasting blood glucose level in Korea. The eligible non-hypertensive subjects (n = 3,396,187) among the National Health Insurance Service-Nat...

This study investigates the intricate interplay between social class, sex, and self-reported health (SRH) using data from the European Health Survey of Spain 2020 (EESE2020). Employing a cross-sectional design and a representative sample of 22,072 in...

The mortality and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) of burn patients are decreasing over time. However, finding novel effective treatment approaches using natural agents is highly considered to reduce the burden of burn injuries. One of the rece...

Data of a longitudinal cohort study were analyzed to investigate the association between prenatal tobacco exposure and electroencephalographical (EEG) power spectrum in healthy, school-aged children as well as its relationship with attention deficit...

Large-scale imaging studies often face challenges stemming from heterogeneity arising from differences in geographic location, instrumental setups, image acquisition protocols, study design, and latent variables that remain undisclosed. While numerou...

Paired data often arise in medical studies, with a correlation between responses of paired organs or parts. Under an intra-correlated model, this paper proposes a generalized linear model to investigate probable confounding factors of the individual...

One form of corporal punishment commonly used in the United States is spanking. Spanking is a well-known risk factor for adverse child development, although its influence on children’s approaches to learning (ATL) has been largely overlooked. E...

Sarcopenic obesity is closely associated with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) and has high risk of total knee replacement (TKR). In addition, poor nutrition status may lead to sarcopenia and physical frailty in KOA and is negatively associated with surgery...

Purpose: Study findings suggest association between anemia and postpartum depression, but available evidence is scant and inconsistent. We investigate whether anemia is related to postpartum depression among women who have recently given birth in Mal...

Pregnancy at an advanced maternal age is considered a risk factor for adverse maternal, fetal, and neonatal outcomes. Here we investigated whether maternal age could be associated with differences in the blood levels of newborn screening (NBS) marker...

Rare-disease registries can be useful for studying the associations between environmental exposures and disease severity, but often require the addition of a healthy comparison control group. Defining a surrogate control group, matched and balanced o...

This study investigated the potential modifying effects of the level of the serum interleukin-18 (IL-18) on the association between BDNF methylation status and long-term cardiovascular outcomes in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Hospital...

Fetal exposure to famine may have long-term consequences in adulthood. The purpose of the present study was to explore the association between famine exposure in fetal life (Chinese famine in 1959–1961) and obesity risk in adulthood. A total of...

Telomere length is an index of cellular aging. Healthy lifestyles are associated with reduced oxidative stress and longer telomeres, whereas unhealthy behaviors are related to shorter telomeres and greater biological aging. This investigation was des...

Openness and communication between partners are key elements of dyadic coping with stress. Our main research question is: what is the impact of these factors on relational satisfaction in spouses struggling with infertility or miscarriage? In the cur...

Background: Due to the low certainty of existing evidence, no formal recommendation can be made for or against the use of antipsychotics over usual care in ICU patients with delirium. To advance evidence-based practice, we used observational data fro...

Accurate estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs) serves as a cornerstone of personalized decision-making, especially in observational studies where treatment assignment is not randomized. However, the presence of confounding and complex...

Sedentary transport is known to adversely affect health. Few studies have focused on motorcycle use. This study examines the association of motorcycle use with overweight in urban adults in Taiwan. Cross-sectional data from 1069 Taiwanese adults aged...

Obesity and overweight status are primary risk factors for stroke. A relative small number of studies has analyzed the association of abdominal obesity, a crucial indicator for insulin resistance with stroke, compared to general obesity. We aimed to...

Analysis of instrumental variables is an effective approach to dealing with endogenous variables and unmeasured confounding issue in causal inference. We propose using the piecewise linear model to fit the relationship between the continuous instrume...

Background: China is in a period of rapid transformation of economic and social development. The imbalance in the distribution of social benefits, focusing on adjustment and reorganization, has led to an increase in relative deprivation. Studies have...

Background: Motor coordination is a fundamental skill in childhood. Factors such as age, sex, and regular sports practice influence its development. However, there is little research that jointly analyzes the impact of these factors on the motor skil...

Background: Most commonly, mortality is used for evaluation of organized breast cancer screening programmes. Survival analyses are also being employed to provide more timely assessment. A novel approach has been introduced for calculating survival us...