ArticlePharmacoepidemiology and drug safety2025
Using Quantitative Bias Analysis to Adjust for Misclassification of COVID-19 Outcomes: An Applied Example of Inhaled Corticosteroids and COVID-19 Outcomes.
Article in Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Quantifying selection bias due to unobserved patients in pharmacoepidemiologic studies of severe COVID-19 cohorts.BMC medical research methodology · 2026Article
- Risk of Hospitalized COVID-19 in COPD: Single-Inhaler Triple Versus Dual Bronchodilator Therapy.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2026Article
- Applying High-Dimensional Propensity Scores in a Study of Inhaled Corticosteroids and COVID-19 Outcomes.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2025Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundDuring the pandemic, there was concern that underascertainment of COVID-19 outcomes may impact treatment effect estimation in pharmacoepidemiologic studies. We assessed the impact of outcome misclassification on the association between inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) and COVID-19 hospitalisation and death in the United Kingdom during the first pandemic wave using probabilistic bias analysis (PBA).
methodsUsing data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum, we defined a cohort with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) on 1 March 2020. We compared the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation and death among users of ICS/long-acting β-agonist (LABA) and users of LABA/LAMA using inverse probability of treatment weighted (IPTW) logistic regression. We used PBA to assess the impact of non-differential outcome misclassification. We assigned beta distributions to sensitivity and specificity and sampled from these 100 000 times for summary-level and 10 000 times for record-level PBA. Using these values, we simulated outcomes and applied IPTW logistic regression to adjust for confounding and misclassification. Sensitivity analyses excluded ICS + LABA + LAMA (triple therapy) users.
resultsAmong 161 411 patients with COPD, ICS users had increased odds of COVID-19 hospitalisations and death compared with LABA/LAMA users (OR for COVID-19 hospitalisation 1.59 (95% CI 1.31-1.92); OR for COVID-19 death 1.63 (95% CI 1.26-2.11)). After IPTW and exclusion of people using triple therapy, ORs moved towards the null. All implementations of QBA, both record- and summary-level PBA, modestly shifted the ORs away from the null and increased uncertainty.
conclusionsWe observed increased risks of COVID-19 hospitalisation and death among ICS users compared to LABA/LAMA users. Outcome misclassification was unlikely to change the conclusions of the study, but confounding by indication remains a concern.
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