A systematic review of how missing data are handled and reported in multi-database pharmacoepidemiologic studies

Pharmacoepidemiologic multi-database studies (MDBS) provide opportunities to better evaluate the safety and effectiveness of medicines. However, the issue of missing data is often exacerbated in MDBS, potentially resulting in bias and precision loss. We sought to measure how missing data are being recorded and addressed in pharmacoepidemiologic MDBS.

We conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed for pharmacoepidemiologic MDBS published between 1st January 2018 and 31st December 2019. Included studies were those that used ≥2 distinct databases to assess the same safety/effectiveness outcome associated with a drug exposure. Outcome variables extracted from the studies included strategies to execute a MDBS, reporting of missing data (type, bias evaluation) and the methods used to account for missing data.

Two thousand seven hundred and twenty-six articles were identified, and 62 studies were included: using data from either North America (56%), Europe (31%), multiple regions (11%) or East-Asia (2%). Thirty-five (56%) articles reported missing data: 11 of these studies reported that this could have introduced bias and 19 studies reported a method to address missing data. Thirteen (68%) carried out a complete case analysis, 2 (11%) applied multiple imputation, 2 (11%) used both methods, 1 (5%) used mean imputation and 1 (5%) substituted information from a similar variable.

Just over half of the recent pharmacoepidemiologic MDBS reported missing data and two-thirds of these studies reported how they accounted for it. We should increase our vigilance for database completeness in MDBS by reporting and addressing the missing data that could introduce bias.