ReviewJournal of neurology2014
Confounding in association studies: month of birth and multiple sclerosis.
Review in Journal of neurology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Vitamin D in early life and later risk of multiple sclerosis-A systematic review, meta-analysis.PloS one · 2019Pooled it
- The epidemiology, pathology and pathogenesis of MS: Therapeutic implications.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2025Review
- Vitamin D as a Risk Factor for Multiple Sclerosis: Immunoregulatory or Neuroprotective?Frontiers in neurology · 2022Review
- Seasonally variant gene expression in full-term human placenta.FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · 2020Article
- Vitamin D and Multiple Sclerosis: A Comprehensive Review.Neurology and therapy · 2018Review
- A nationwide survey of the influence of month of birth on the risk of developing multiple sclerosis in Sweden and Iceland.Journal of neurology · 2018Article
- Modeling month-season of birth as a risk factor in mouse models of chronic disease: from multiple sclerosis to autoimmune encephalomyelitis.FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · 2017Article
- Association of neovascular age-related macular degeneration with month and season of birth in Italy.Aging · 2016Article
- Mortality trends of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Norway 1951-2014: an age-period-cohort study.Journal of neurology · 2016Article
- Comment on: Month of birth and risk of multiple sclerosis: confounding and adjustments.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Association studies form the backbone of biomedical research, with almost every effort in the field ultimately boiling down to a comparison between groups, coupled with some form of statistical test intended to determine whether or not any observed difference is more or less than would be expected by chance. Unfortunately, although the paradigm is powerful and frequently effective, it is often forgotten that false positive association can easily arise if there is any bias or systematic difference in the way in which study subjects are selected into the considered groups. To protect against such confounding, researchers generally try to match cases and controls for extraneous variables thought to correlate with the exposures of interest. However, if seemingly homogenously distributed exposures are actually more heterogeneous than appreciated, then matching may be inadequate and false positive results can still arise. In this review, we will illustrate these fundamental issues by considering the previously proposed relationship between month of birth and multiple sclerosis. This much discussed but false positive association serves as a reminder of just how heterogeneous even easily measured environmental risk factors can be, and how easily case control studies can be confounded by seemingly minor differences in ascertainment.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.