ArticleEpidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)2014
Regression discontinuity designs in epidemiology: causal inference without randomized trials.
Article in Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 139 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
139 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Impact of Molecular Diagnostics for Tuberculosis on Patient-Important Outcomes: A Systematic Review of Study Methodologies.PloS one · 2016Pooled it
- Regression Discontinuity and Randomized Controlled Trial Estimates: An Application to The Mycotic Ulcer Treatment Trials.Ophthalmic epidemiology · 2018Trial
- Born in Bradford's Better Start: an experimental birth cohort study to evaluate the impact of early life interventions.BMC public health · 2016Trial
- Dietary supplementation with radionuclide free food improves children's health following community exposure to (137)Cesium: a prospective study.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2015Trial
- Article
- Abnormal Flagging of Prostate Specific Antigen Screening Tests: A Regression Discontinuity Design.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Postpartum continuity of care for women with HIV: Option B+ policy impact and limitations in South Africa.BMJ global health · 2026Article
- Impact of Community-Based Hypertension Screening on Blood Pressure Management and the Role of Socioeconomic Status.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2026Article
- Psychologically informed reminder messages for promoting BRCA1/2 carrier screening: evidence from a large-scale population-based study.European journal of public health · 2026Observational
- Variation in effectiveness of blood transfusion by hospital day: A multicenter retrospective study.Journal of hospital medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Antenatal Corticosteroid Administration and Childhood Respiratory Morbidity: A Regression Discontinuity Study.BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 2026Article
- Community-Based BMI Screening for Overweight and Obesity in Adults Aged 35 Years and Older in Malaysia: Regression Discontinuity Analysis.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- A Multimodal Atlas Reveals the Anatomical Distribution of Medium Spiny Neuron Subtypes and a Novel RGS6+ Population in the Primate Striatum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Does home-based screening improve hypertension diagnosis, treatment and control? A regression discontinuity analysis in urban India.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- Initiation of Dolutegravir Versus Efavirenz on Viral Suppression and Retention at 6 months: A Regression Discontinuity Design.Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) · 2025Article
- Comparison of thrombectomy alone versus bridging thrombolysis in a US population using regression discontinuity analysis.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- When, why and how are estimated effects transported between populations? A scoping review of studies applying transportability methods.European journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Oldest-Old Social Capital and Health and the Role of Digital Inequalities: Longitudinal Cohort Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Observational
79 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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5 authors.
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Abstract
When patients receive an intervention based on whether they score below or above some threshold value on a continuously measured random variable, the intervention will be randomly assigned for patients close to the threshold. The regression discontinuity design exploits this fact to estimate causal treatment effects. In spite of its recent proliferation in economics, the regression discontinuity design has not been widely adopted in epidemiology. We describe regression discontinuity, its implementation, and the assumptions required for causal inference. We show that regression discontinuity is generalizable to the survival and nonlinear models that are mainstays of epidemiologic analysis. We then present an application of regression discontinuity to the much-debated epidemiologic question of when to start HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy. Using data from a large South African cohort (2007-2011), we estimate the causal effect of early versus deferred treatment eligibility on mortality. Patients whose first CD4 count was just below the 200 cells/μL CD4 count threshold had a 35% lower hazard of death (hazard ratio = 0.65 [95% confidence interval = 0.45-0.94]) than patients presenting with CD4 counts just above the threshold. We close by discussing the strengths and limitations of regression discontinuity designs for epidemiology.
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