The Association Between Childhood Leukemia and Population Mixing: An Artifact of Focusing on Clusters?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Studies investigating the population-mixing hypothesis in childhood leukemia principally use two analytical approaches: (1) nonrandom selection of areas according to specific characteristics, followed by comparisons of their incidence of childhood leukemia with that expected based on the national average; and (2) regression analyses of region-wide data to identify characteristics associated with the incidence of childhood leukemia. These approaches have generated contradictory results. We compare these approaches using observed and simulated data.

Methods

We generated 10,000 simulated regions using the correlation structure and distributions from a United Kingdom dataset. We simulated cases using a Poisson distribution with the incidence rate set to the national a

SUBMITTER: Berrie L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6276864 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature