ArticleEpidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)2017
Trade-offs of Personal Versus More Proxy Exposure Measures in Environmental Epidemiology.
Article in Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 141 papers, 10 of them syntheses 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
141 citing papers in PubMed, 10 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and inflammatory bowel disease: review and meta-analysis.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2026Pooled it
- Fluoride and Neurodevelopmental Hazard Modelling: An Assessment of Concentration-Response Analysis.Community dentistry and oral epidemiology · 2026Pooled it
- Prenatal metal(loid) exposure and preterm birth: a systematic review of the epidemiologic evidence.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2025Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Predictors of Vaping Cessation Among Young People.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2025Pooled it
- Air Pollution and Temperature: a Systematic Review of Ubiquitous Environmental Exposures and Sudden Cardiac Death.Current environmental health reports · 2023Pooled it
- Prenatal Exposure to Toxic Metals and Neural Tube Defects: A Systematic Review of the Epidemiologic Evidence.Environmental health perspectives · 2023Pooled it
- Ambient air pollution and clinical dementia: systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2023Pooled it
- Indoor and outdoor air pollution and couple fecundability: a systematic review.Human reproduction update · 2023Pooled it
- A systematic review of the use of silicone wristbands for environmental exposure assessment, with a focus on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Impact of Di-2-Ethylhexyl Phthalate Metabolites on Male Reproductive Function: a Systematic Review of Human Evidence.Current environmental health reports · 2018Pooled it
- Plasma Concentrations of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances at Baseline and Associations with Glycemic Indicators and Diabetes Incidence among High-Risk Adults in the Diabetes Prevention Program Trial.Environmental health perspectives · 2017Trial
- Air pollution and autism-like traits: Sensitive periods and joint effects of exposure to sources and constituents of fine particulate matter.Environmental research · 2026Article
- Maternal ambient air pollution exposure and risk of stillbirth in Georgia, USA.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2026Article
- Gene-Temperature Interactions and Risk of Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Prenatal Air Pollution Exposure and Autism Spectrum Disorder in the ECHO Consortium.Environmental health perspectives · 2026Article
- Residential proximity to agricultural pesticide exposures during preconception and pregnancy and associations with Apgar scores in the Az-PEAR study (2006-2020).Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2026Article
- Long-term exposure to wildfire smoke particulate matter and incident stroke: a US nationwide study.European heart journal · 2026Article
- Relevance and challenges of exposome studies for environmental health research.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2026Review
- Association between greenspace exposure before, during, and after pregnancy and autism spectrum disorder in offspring.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2026Article
- An Epidemiologic Review of Endocrine-disrupting Chemicals and Understudied Gynecologic Health Conditions Affecting Quality of Life.Current environmental health reports · 2026Review
81 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The technological ability to make personal measurements of toxicant exposures is growing rapidly. While this can decrease measurement error and therefore help reduce attenuation of effect estimates, we argue that as measures of exposure or dose become more personal, threats to validity of study findings can increase in ways that more proxy measures may avoid. We use directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to describe conditions where confounding is introduced by use of more personal measures of exposure and avoided via more proxy measures of personal exposure or target tissue dose. As exposure or dose estimates are more removed from the individual, they become less susceptible to biases from confounding by personal factors that can often be hard to control, such as personal behaviors. Similarly, more proxy exposure estimates are less susceptible to reverse causation. We provide examples from the literature where adjustment for personal factors in analyses that use more proxy exposure estimates have little effect on study results. In conclusion, increased personalized exposure assessment has important advantages for measurement accuracy, but it can increase the possibility of biases from personal factors and reverse causation compared with more proxy exposure estimates. Understanding the relation between more and less proxy exposures, and variables that could introduce confounding are critical components to study design.
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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.