Trial reportInternational journal of epidemiology2020
Emulating a target trial in case-control designs: an application to statins and colorectal cancer.
Trial report 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 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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.
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, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reporting of Observational Studies Explicitly Aiming to Emulate Randomized Trials: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2023Pooled it
- Target trial emulation studies in oncology: a comprehensive analysis.The oncologist · 2026Article
- Use of causal inference methods in case-control studies: a methodology review.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Review
- Design and Implementation of Observational Studies Emulating a Target Trial.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Impact of a Revised Ryan White Part A HIV Care Coordination Program on Viral Suppression and Durable Viral Suppression.Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) · 2026Article
- Transparent Reporting of Observational Studies Emulating a Target Trial-The TARGET Statement.JAMA · 2025 · on this mapArticle
- Simultaneously Dealing With Immortal Time Bias and Residual Confounding: A Case Study of a High-Dimensional Propensity Score Approach With a Nested Case-Control Framework in Multiple Sclerosis Research.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2025Article
- Use of β-adrenoreceptor drugs and Parkinson's disease incidence in women from the French E3N cohort study.Journal of Parkinson's disease · 2025Article
- Methodologies for the Emulation of Biomarker-Guided Trials Using Observational Data: A Systematic Review.Journal of personalized medicine · 2025Review
- Invited commentary: target trial emulation-a call for more widespread use.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- The Authors Respond.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Transport Personnel Health Cohort (TRAPHEAC): study protocol and methodological considerations.Environmental health and preventive medicine · 2025Article
- Making causal inferences from transactional data: A narrative review of opportunities and challenges when implementing the target trial framework.The Journal of international medical research · 2024Review
- Patients on vitamin K treatment: is switching to direct-acting oral anticoagulation cost-effective? A target trial on a prospective cohort.Open heart · 2024Observational
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- Article
- Comparative Risks of Infection With Belimumab Versus Oral Immunosuppressants in Patients With Nonrenal Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.Arthritis & rheumatology (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2023Article
- Statin use and risk of colorectal cancer in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.EClinicalMedicine · 2023Article
- Implementation of the trial emulation approach in medical research: a scoping review.BMC medical research methodology · 2023Article
- [Comparing the effectiveness of multiple dynamic treatment strategies using target trial emulation].Pravention und Gesundheitsforderung · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPrevious case-control studies have reported a strong association between statin use and lower cancer risk. It is unclear whether this association reflects a benefit of statins or is the result of design decisions that cannot be mapped to a (hypothetical) target trial (that would answer the question of interest).
methodsWe outlined the protocol of a target trial to estimate the effect of statins on colorectal cancer incidence among adults with low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol below 5 mmol/L. We then emulated the target trial using linked electronic health records of 752 469 eligible UK adults (CALIBER 1999-2016) under both a cohort design and a case-control sampling of the cohort. We used pooled logistic regression to estimate intention-to-treat and per-protocol effects of statins on colorectal cancer, with adjustment for baseline and time-varying risk factors via inverse-probability weighting. Finally, we compared our case-control effect estimates with those obtained using previous case-control procedures.
resultsOver the 6-year follow-up, 3596 individuals developed colorectal cancer. Estimated intention-to-treat and per-protocol hazard ratios were 1.00 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.87, 1.16) and 0.90 (95% CI: 0.71, 1.12), respectively. As expected, adequate case-control sampling yielded the same estimates. By contrast, previous case-control analytical approaches yielded estimates that appeared strongly protective (odds ratio 0.57, 95% CI: 0.36, 0.91, for ≥5 vs. <5 years of statin use).
conclusionsOur study demonstrates how to explicitly emulate a target trial using case-control data to reduce discrepancies between observational and randomized trial evidence. This approach may inform future case-control analyses for comparative effectiveness research.
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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.