De extra kans op longkanker van iemand die én heeft gerookt én asbestvezels heeft ingeademd is meer dan een optelling, maar minder dan het product van de verhoging bij alleen roken en die bij alleen asbestblootstelling. Dit concluderen Wraith en Mengersen na een meta-analyse van de literatuur met behulp van de Bayesiaanse benadering, een statistische methode. Bron: Wraith D. & Mengersen K. (2006). Assessing the combined effect of asbestos exposure and smoking on lung cancer: a Bayesian approach. Statistics in Medicine, june 16.
Bron: Wraith D. & Mengersen K. (2006). Assessing the combined effect of asbestos exposure and smoking on lung cancer: a Bayesian approach. Statistics in Medicine, june 16.
Abstract
We review the literature on the combined association between lung cancer and two environmental exposures, asbestos exposure and smoking, and explore a Bayesian approach to assess evidence of interaction between the exposures. The meta-analysis combines separate indices of additive and multiplicative relationships and multivariate relative risk estimates. By making inferences on posterior probabilities we can explore both the form and strength of interaction. This analysis may be more informative than providing evidence to support one relation over another on the basis of statistical significance. Overall, we find evidence for a more than additive and less than multiplicative relation. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.