Taioli Emanuela, Bonassi Stefano
Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology Unit, Ospedale Maggiore IRCCS, University of Milan, Via F. Sforza, 28, Italy.
Mutat Res. 2002 Sep;512(1):85-92. doi: 10.1016/s1383-5742(02)00027-3.
The number of epidemiological studies involving biological markers has dramatically increased in the last years. These studies are generally small sized and this feature has called attention to the need to summarize the individual results, while waiting for the completion of larger studies, designed to answer questions that have been raised by preliminary studies. We describe here some of the methodological issues related to pooling data of biomarker studies, taking advantage of the experience accumulated by conducting two pooled analyses, one of studies of metabolic gene polymorphisms and cancer, the other on cytogenetic damage. Topics that are considered are: data standardization, population selection and bias, statistical analysis, ethical issues. Pooled analysis seems to provide a relevant improvement over meta-analysis in molecular epidemiology studies, though more research on methodology is needed.
在过去几年中，涉及生物标志物的流行病学研究数量急剧增加。这些研究通常规模较小，这一特点促使人们关注在等待旨在回答初步研究提出的问题的更大规模研究完成期间，总结个体研究结果的必要性。我们在此利用通过进行两项汇总分析所积累的经验，描述一些与生物标志物研究数据汇总相关的方法学问题，其中一项是代谢基因多态性与癌症研究的汇总分析，另一项是关于细胞遗传学损伤的汇总分析。所考虑的主题包括：数据标准化、人群选择与偏倚、统计分析、伦理问题。尽管在方法学上还需要更多研究，但汇总分析似乎在分子流行病学研究中比荟萃分析有显著改进。
