Goodman Michael, Barraj Leila M, Mink Pamela J, Britton Nicole L, Yager Janice W, Flanders W Dana, Kelsh Michael A
Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, USA.
Epidemiol Perspect Innov. 2007 Sep 26;4:9. doi: 10.1186/1742-5573-4-9.
We suggest that the need to account for systematic error may explain the apparent lack of agreement among studies of maternal dietary methylmercury exposure and neuropsychological testing outcomes in children, a topic of ongoing debate.
These sensitivity analyses address the possible role of systematic error on reported associations between low-level prenatal exposure to methylmercury and neuropsychological test results in two well known, but apparently conflicting cohort studies: the Faroe Islands Study (FIS) and the Seychelles Child Development Study (SCDS). We estimated the potential impact of confounding, selection bias, and information bias on reported results in these studies using the Boston Naming Test (BNT) score as the outcome variable.
Our findings indicate that, assuming various degrees of bias (in either direction) the corrected regression coefficients largely overlap. Thus, the reported effects in the two studies are not necessarily different from each other.
Based on our sensitivity analysis results, it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions about the presence or absence of neurodevelopmental effects due to in utero methylmercury exposure at levels reported in the FIS and SCDS.
我们认为，需要考虑系统误差这一点或许可以解释为何在关于母亲膳食甲基汞暴露与儿童神经心理测试结果的研究中明显缺乏一致性，这是一个仍在争论的话题。
这些敏感性分析探讨了系统误差在两项著名但结果明显相互矛盾的队列研究中，对低水平产前甲基汞暴露与神经心理测试结果之间所报告关联可能产生的作用，这两项研究分别是法罗群岛研究（FIS）和塞舌尔儿童发育研究（SCDS）。我们以波士顿命名测试（BNT）分数作为结果变量，估计了混杂因素、选择偏倚和信息偏倚对这些研究中所报告结果的潜在影响。
我们的研究结果表明，假设存在不同程度的偏倚（无论方向如何），校正后的回归系数在很大程度上相互重叠。因此，两项研究中所报告的效应不一定彼此不同。
基于我们的敏感性分析结果，对于法罗群岛研究和塞舌尔儿童发育研究中所报告水平的宫内甲基汞暴露是否存在神经发育影响，无法得出明确结论。
