ArticleCancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology2018
Studying the Effects of Nonindicated Medications on Cancer: Etiologic versus Action-Focused Analysis of Epidemiologic Data.
Article in Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 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
6 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Antidepressant adherence and breast cancer recurrence risk in women with major depressive disorder: a retrospective cohort.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2026Article
- Association of Insulin, Metformin, and Statin with Mortality in Breast Cancer Patients.Cancer research and treatment · 2021Article
- DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS FOR CONFOUNDING AND SELECTION BIAS IN LONGITUDINAL DATA: THE %LENGTHEN, %BALANCE, AND %MAKEPLOT (CONFOUNDR) MACROS AND R PACKAGE.American journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Metformin inhibition of colorectal cancer cell migration is associated with rebuilt adherens junctions and FAK downregulation.Journal of cellular physiology · 2020Article
- From Epidemiologic Knowledge to Improved Health: A Vision for Translational Epidemiology.American journal of epidemiology · 2019Review
- Diagnosing Covariate Balance Across Levels of Right-Censoring Before and After Application of Inverse-Probability-of-Censoring Weights.American journal of epidemiology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The study of nonindicated medications on cancer outcomes is challenged by potential time-related biases. The literature has strongly advocated for treating the exposure as time-varying and summarizing the outcomes through a dose-response model (an etiologic-focused analysis). An alternative is to refashion the data to resemble a hypothetical randomized trial of drug use (an action-focused analysis). To our knowledge, their relative treatment of time-related bias and aspects of interpretation have not been compared. In this commentary, using the study of metformin use on colorectal cancer risk by Bradley and colleagues (2018) as motivation, we compare the etiologic versus action-focused analysis of epidemiologic data. We examine their treatment of immortal person-time, time-varying confounding, selection bias, and the biological and clinical relevance of their results. In doing so, we aim to establish areas of common ground and points of departure that can guide future observational studies of medications on cancer risk, recurrence, and survival.
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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.