Invited commentary: How big is that interaction (in my community)--and in which direction?

ABSTRACT: In an accompanying article, Turner et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2014;180(12):1145-1149) compare the joint effects of smoking and air pollution to make inferences about the reduction in lung cancer mortality achieved when reducing each exposure separately and when reducing both together. In this commentary, we use first principles to quantify the difference between the risk or mortality reduction obtained from reducing each of 2 exposures together and the sum of the risk differences obtained from reducing the 2 exposures separately. Metrics of the impact of joint effects or comparisons of joint effects presented in units of absolute risk, such as Rothman's I, can provide more meaningful quantitative measures of public health impact than unitless metrics (e.g., ratios) and standardized metrics (e

SUBMITTER: Panagiotou OA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4262440 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature