Adjustment for energy intake in nutritional research: a causal inference perspective.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Four models are commonly used to adjust for energy intake when estimating the causal effect of a dietary component on an outcome: 1) the "standard model" adjusts for total energy intake, 2) the "energy partition model" adjusts for remaining energy intake, 3) the "nutrient density model" rescales the exposure as a proportion of total energy, and 4) the "residual model" indirectly adjusts for total energy by using a residual. It remains underappreciated that each approach evaluates a different estimand and only partially accounts for confounding by common dietary causes.

Objectives

We aimed to clarify the implied causal estimand and interpretation of each model and evaluate their performance in reducing dietary confounding.

Methods

Semiparametric directed acy

SUBMITTER: Tomova GD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8755101 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature