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Related Experiment Video

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COVID-19 Seroprevalence Test for IgG Antibody Levels Among Healthy Donors Across Different Pandemic Phases in Jeddah

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Differences between blood donors and a population sample: implications for case-control studies.

Jean Golding¹, Kate Northstone, Laura L Miller

¹School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, MRC Centre for Causal Analyses in Translational Epidemiology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, and Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK.

International Journal of Epidemiology

|July 5, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Choosing study controls is crucial. For genetic studies, blood donors can be suitable for rare diseases, but population samples may be better for common ones. Control health history is key.

Keywords:

ALSPAC blood donors case-control studies genetic studies methodology

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Area of Science:

Genetics
Epidemiology
Biostatistics

Background:

Selecting appropriate controls is vital for genetic variation studies.
Blood donors and random population samples are common control choices.

Purpose of the Study:

To compare blood donors and population samples as controls for genetic variation studies.
To assess biases introduced by different control selection methods.

Main Methods:

Utilized data from parents in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).
Compared blood donors and population samples as control groups.
Computed biases under hypothetical assumptions.

Main Results:

Blood donors significantly differ from the general population in various characteristics.
Blood donors are less suitable for non-genetic studies with patterned exposures.
Blood donors can be adequate for genetic studies of rare disorders (<10% cumulative incidence).
For common disorders, disease development in controls introduces greater bias than social patterning.

Conclusions:

Control subject's medical history is more critical than their source (blood donor vs. population sample).
Parental medical history can serve as a proxy for control disease development.