Prenatal exposure to PM_2.5 and birth weight: A pooled analysis from three North American longitudinal pregnancy cohort studies.

ABSTRACT: A common practice when analyzing multi-site epidemiological data is to include a term for 'site' to account for unmeasured effects at each location. This practice should be carefully considered when site can have complex relationships with important demographic and exposure variables. We leverage data from three longitudinal North American pregnancy cohorts to demonstrate a novel method to assess study heterogeneity and potential combinability of studies for pooled analyses in order to better understand how to consider site in analyses. Results from linear regression and fixed effects meta-regression models run both prior to and following the proposed combinability analyses were compared. In order to exemplify this approach, we examined associations between prenatal exposure to particulate

SUBMITTER: Rosa MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5568041 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature