Journal
ENVIRONMENT INTERNATIONAL
Volume 142, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2020.105810
Keywords
Dose conversion; Inter-individual variability; Uncertainty; Dose-response; Meta-analysis
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Funding
- ICF, Incorporated [EP-C-14-001]
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Meta-analysis approaches can be used to assess the human risks due to exposure to environmental chemicals when there are numerous high-quality epidemiologic studies of priority outcomes in a database. However, methodological issues related to how different studies report effect measures and incorporate exposure into their analyses arise that complicate the pooled analysis of multiple studies. As such, there are pre-analysis steps that are often necessary to prepare summary data reported in epidemiologic studies for dose-response analysis. This paper uses epidemiologic studies of arsenic-induced health effects as a case example and addresses the issues surrounding the estimation of mean doses from censored dose- or exposure-intervals reported in the literature (e.g., estimation of mean doses from high exposures that are only reported as an open-ended interval), calculation of a common dose metric for use in a dose-response meta-analysis (one that takes into consideration inter-individual variability), and calculation of response effective counts that inherently account for confounders. The methods herein may be generalizable to 1) the analysis of other environmental contaminants with a suitable database of epidemiologic studies, and 2) any meta-analytic approach used to pool information across studies. A second companion paper detailing the use of pre-analyzed data in a hierarchical Bayesian dose-response model and techniques for extrapolating risks to target populations follows.
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