Change analysis for intermediate disease markers in nutritional epidemiology: a causal inference perspective.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Several approaches are commonly used to estimate the effect of diet on changes of various intermediate disease markers in prospective studies, including "change-score analysis", "concurrent change-change analysis" and "lagged change-change analysis". Although empirical evidence suggests that concurrent change-change analysis is most robust, consistent, and biologically plausible, in-depth dissection and comparison of these approaches from a causal inference perspective is lacking. We intend to explicitly elucidate and compare the underlying causal model, causal estimand and interpretation of these approaches, intuitively illustrate it with directed acyclic graph (DAG), and further clarify strengths and limitations of the recommended concurrent change-change analysis thro

SUBMITTER: Tang D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10898035 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature