Paper detail

Measuring and estimating interaction between exposures on dichotomous outcome of a population

In observational studies for the interaction between exposures on dichotomous outcome of a population, one usually uses one parameter of a regression model to describe the interaction, leading to one measure of the interaction. In this article, we use the conditional risk of outcome given exposures and covariates to describe the interaction and obtain five different measures for the interaction in observational studies, i.e. difference between the marginal risk differences, ratio of the marginal risk ratios, ratio of the marginal odds ratios, ratio of the conditional risk ratios, and ratio of the conditional odds ratios. By using only one regression model for the conditional risk of outcome given exposures and covariates, we obtain the maximum-likelihood estimates of all these measures. By generating approximate distributions of the maximum-likelihood estimates of these measures, we obtain interval estimates of these measures. The method is presented by studying the interaction between a therapy and the environment on eradication of Helicobacter pylori among Vietnamese children.