Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Many pneumonia etiology case-control studies exclude controls with respiratory illness from enrollment or analyses. Herein we argue that selecting controls regardless of respiratory symptoms provides the least biased estimates of pneumonia etiology. We review 3 reasons investigators may choose to exclude controls with respiratory symptoms in light of epidemiologic principles of control selection and present data from the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) study where relevant to assess their validity. We conclude that exclusion of controls with respiratory symptoms will result in biased estimates of etiology. Randomly selected community controls, with or without respiratory symptoms, as long as they do not meet the criteria for case-defining pneumonia, are most representative of the general population from which cases arose and the least subject to selection bias.

Original publication

DOI

10.1093/cid/cix076

Type

Journal article

Journal

Clin Infect Dis

Publication Date

15/06/2017

Volume

64

Pages

S205 - S212

Keywords

PERCH, control selection, pneumonia etiology, respiratory symptoms, selection bias., Child, Data Interpretation, Statistical, Epidemiologic Research Design, Female, Humans, Male, Multicenter Studies as Topic, Pneumonia, Pneumonia, Bacterial, Pneumonia, Viral, Research Design, Respiratory Tract Infections, Risk Factors, Selection Bias