ArticleInternational journal of epidemiology2020
Vibration of effects in epidemiologic studies of alcohol consumption and breast cancer risk.
Article in International journal of epidemiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Grilling the data: application of specification curve analysis to red meat and all-cause mortality.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2024Pooled it
- Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference.BMC medical research methodology · 2022Pooled it
- Illustrating an Adaptive Prespecification Framework for Observational Research: Target Trial Emulations Comparing Immunomodulator Treatments for COVID-19.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Sensitivity analysis with iterative outlier detection for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.Statistics in medicine · 2024Article
- Effect of alcohol consumption on breast cancer: probabilistic bias analysis for adjustment of exposure misclassification bias and confounders.BMC medical research methodology · 2023Article
- Systematically assessing microbiome-disease associations identifies drivers of inconsistency in metagenomic research.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- [Benefit assessment of digital health applications-challenges and opportunities].Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz · 2021Review
- Article
- Examining the robustness of observational associations to model, measurement and sampling uncertainty with the vibration of effects framework.International journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDifferent analytical approaches can influence the associations estimated in observational studies. We assessed the variability of effect estimates reported within and across observational studies evaluating the impact of alcohol on breast cancer.
methodsWe abstracted largest harmful, largest protective and smallest (closest to the null value of 1.0) relative risk estimates in studies included in a recent alcohol-breast cancer meta-analysis, and recorded how they differed based on five model specification characteristics, including exposure definition, exposure contrast levels, study populations, adjustment covariates and/or model approaches. For each study, we approximated vibration of effects by dividing the largest by the smallest effect estimate [i.e. ratio of odds ratio (ROR)].
resultsAmong 97 eligible studies, 85 (87.6%) reported both harmful and protective relative effect estimates for an alcohol-breast cancer relationship, which ranged from 1.1 to 17.9 and 0.0 to 1.0, respectively. The RORs comparing the largest and smallest estimates in value ranged from 1.0 to 106.2, with a median of 3.0 [interquartile range (IQR) 2.0-5.2]. One-third (35, 36.1%) of the RORs were based on extreme effect estimates with at least three different model specification characteristics; the vast majority (87, 89.7%) had different exposure definitions or contrast levels. Similar vibrations of effect were observed when only extreme estimates with differences based on study populations and/or adjustment covariates were compared.
conclusionsMost observational studies evaluating the impact of alcohol on breast cancer report relative effect estimates for the same associations that diverge by >2-fold. Therefore, observational studies should estimate the vibration of effects to provide insight regarding the stability of findings.
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Registered trials
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