ArticleEGEMS (Washington, DC)2016
Comparative Effectiveness Research Using Observational Data: Active Comparators to Emulate Target Trials with Inactive Comparators.
Article in EGEMS (Washington, DC), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effect of exogenous testosterone on cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and thromboembolic adverse events: results of three complementary research designs.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- GLP-1RA and the risk of non-arteritic anterior ischaemic optic neuropathy in patients with type 2 diabetes: A population-based study.Diabetes, obesity & metabolism · 2026Article
- Large-scale Empirical Identification of Candidate Comparators for Pharmacoepidemiological Studies.Drug safety · 2025Article
- Benzodiazepine Initiation and the Risk of Falls or Fall-Related Injuries in Older Adults Following Acute Ischemic Stroke.Neurology. Clinical practice · 2025Article
- Nonbenzodiazepine hypnotics and police-reported motor vehicle crash risk among older adults: a sequential target trial emulation.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Overcoming time-varying confounding in self-controlled case series with active comparators: application and recommendations.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- The early bird in renal rescue: timing matters in acute kidney injury management-insights from target trial emulation.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Core Concepts in Pharmacoepidemiology: New-User Designs.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2024Review
- Article
- Bias amplification of unobserved confounding in pharmacoepidemiological studies using indication-based sampling.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2023Article
- Article
- Comparative safety of sulfonylureas among U.S. nursing home residents.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2023Article
- Thrombotic events following Covid-19 vaccines compared to Influenza vaccines.European journal of internal medicine · 2022Article
- When Can Nonrandomized Studies Support Valid Inference Regarding Effectiveness or Safety of New Medical Treatments?Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2022Review
- A cost-effective chart review sampling design to account for phenotyping error in electronic health records (EHR) data.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2021Article
- Comparative safety of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors and sulfonylureas among frail older adults.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2021Article
- Association of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors With the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Children and Adolescents.JAMA psychiatry · 2021Article
- Article
- Incidence of venous thromboembolism following initiation of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in U.S. women.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2020Observational
- Matching with time-dependent treatments: A review and look forward.Statistics in medicine · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionBecause a comparison of noninitiators and initiators of treatment may be hopelessly confounded, guidelines for the conduct of observational research often recommend using an "active" comparator group consisting of people who initiate a treatment other than the medication of interest. In this paper, we discuss the conditions under which this approach is valid if the goal is to emulate a trial with an inactive comparator. IDENTIFICATION OF EFFECTS: We provide conditions under which a target trial in a subpopulation can be validly emulated from observational data, using an active comparator that is known or believed to be inactive for the outcome of interest. The average treatment effect in the population as a whole is not identified, but under certain conditions this approach can be used to emulate a trial in the subset of individuals who were treated with the treatment of interest, in the subset of individuals who were treated with the treatment of interest but not with the comparator, or in the subset of individuals who were treated with both the treatment of interest and the active comparator. THE PLAUSIBILITY OF THE COMPARABILITY CONDITIONS: We discuss whether the required conditions can be expected to hold in pharmacoepidemiologic research, with a particular focus on whether the conditions are plausible in situations where the standard analysis fails due to unmeasured confounding by access to health care or health seeking behaviors. DISCUSSION: The conditions discussed in this paper may at best be approximately true. Investigators using active comparator designs to emulate trials with inactive comparators should exercise caution.
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.