ArticlePloS one2017
Drug exposure in register-based research-An expert-opinion based evaluation of methods.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The Preoperative Waiting Time on Long-Term Survival Following Elderly Hip Fracture Surgery.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Polygenic and pharmacogenomic contributions to medication dosing: a real-world longitudinal biobank study.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Article
- Determining Drug Exposure Based on Medication Dispensing Data: A Validation Study of Vitamin K Antagonist Treatment Episodes Against INR Records.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2025Article
- High-dose folic acid use and cancer risk in women who have given birth: A register-based cohort study.Epilepsia · 2025Article
- Real-world effectiveness of pharmacological treatments for bipolar disorder: register-based national cohort study.The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science · 2023Article
- Trends in the use of psychotropics in older people with dementia: interrupted time series of Finnish clinical guidelines of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.Age and ageing · 2023Article
- Prevalence of oral anticoagulant use among people with and without Alzheimer's disease.BMC geriatrics · 2022Article
- Comparative Effectiveness of Antipsychotics for Risk of Attempted or Completed Suicide Among Persons With Schizophrenia.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2021Article
- Antiepileptic drug use and mortality among community-dwelling persons with Alzheimer disease.Neurology · 2020Article
- 20-year follow-up study of physical morbidity and mortality in relationship to antipsychotic treatment in a nationwide cohort of 62,250 patients with schizophrenia (FIN20).World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2020Article
- Long-term thiazide use and risk of low-energy fractures among persons with Alzheimer's disease-nested case-control study.Osteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA · 2019Article
- Duration of new antidepressant use and factors associated with discontinuation among community-dwelling persons with Alzheimer's disease.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2019Article
- Real-world Effectiveness of Pharmacologic Treatments for the Prevention of Rehospitalization in a Finnish Nationwide Cohort of Patients With Bipolar Disorder.JAMA psychiatry · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn register-based pharmacoepidemiological studies, construction of drug exposure periods from drug purchases is a major methodological challenge. Various methods have been applied but their validity is rarely evaluated. Our objective was to conduct an expert-opinion based evaluation of the correctness of drug use periods produced by different methods.
methodsDrug use periods were calculated with three fixed methods: time windows, assumption of one Defined Daily Dose (DDD) per day and one tablet per day, and with PRE2DUP that is based on modelling of individual drug purchasing behavior. Expert-opinion based evaluation was conducted with 200 randomly selected purchase histories of warfarin, bisoprolol, simvastatin, risperidone and mirtazapine in the MEDALZ-2005 cohort (28,093 persons with Alzheimer's disease). Two experts reviewed purchase histories and judged which methods had joined correct purchases and gave correct duration for each of 1000 drug exposure periods.
resultsThe evaluated correctness of drug use periods was 70-94% for PRE2DUP, and depending on grace periods and time window lengths 0-73% for tablet methods, 0-41% for DDD methods and 0-11% for time window methods. The highest rate of evaluated correct solutions for each method class were observed for 1 tablet per day with 180 days grace period (TAB_1_180, 43-73%), and 1 DDD per day with 180 days grace period (1-41%). Time window methods produced at maximum only 11% correct solutions. The best performing fixed method TAB_1_180 reached highest correctness for simvastatin 73% (95% CI 65-81%) whereas 89% (95% CI 84-94%) of PRE2DUP periods were judged as correct.
conclusionsThis study shows inaccuracy of fixed methods and the urgent need for new data-driven methods. In the expert-opinion based evaluation, the lowest error rates were observed with data-driven method PRE2DUP.
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