Cited by 257Birth, Development, and HealthHealth, Environment, Cognitive AgingStatistical Methods in Epidemiology

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 93 of the 94 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Assessing Intrauterine Influences on Offspring Health Outcomes: Can Epidemiological Studies Yield Robust Findings?

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Smith, George Davey·2008·Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology

Abstract

Abstract: The influence of factors acting during the intrauterine period on health outcomes of offspring is of considerable research and public health interest. There are, however, methodological challenges in establishing robust causal links, because exposures often act many decades before outcomes of interest, may act before it is evident that women are pregnant and would enter pregnancy birth cohorts, and may also be strongly related to other factors, generating considerable degrees of potential confounding. The degree of confounding can sometimes be estimated by comparing the association between exposures experienced by the mother during pregnancy and outcomes among the offspring with the association of exposures experienced by the father during the pregnancy period and offspring outcomes. If the effects are due to an intrauterine exposure, then maternal exposure during pregnancy should have a clearly greater influence than paternal exposure. A different approach is that of Mendelian randomization, which utilizes genetic variants of known functional effect that can proxy for modifiable exposures. If carried by the mother, these variants would influence the intrauterine environment experienced by her offspring. These genetic variants are stable over time and can be assessed after pregnancy is complete or even after outcomes in the offspring have been observed. The variants would also not generally be related to potential confounding factors. Other epidemiological strategies are briefly reviewed. It is concluded that the naïve acceptance of findings utilizing conventional epidemiological methods in this setting is misplaced.

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Crossref · 10.1111/j.1742-7843.2007.00191.x

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  • The idea behind triangulation is that when we compare different approaches with assumed unrelated sources of bias, particularly if the expected direction of bias for some of the approaches is different, we would not expect to obtain the same estimates of the causal effect (unless all were unbiased).

    “The idea behind triangulation is that when we compare different approaches with assumed unrelated sources of bias, particularly if the expected direction of bias for some of the approaches is different, we would not expect to obtain the same estimates of the causal effect (unless all were unbiased).7,15”

    From Triangulation in aetiological epidemiology (2017) · cites this paper as [7]

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1 of the 94 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

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  1. Manson J, 1991, A prospective study of antioxidant vitamins and incidence of coronary heart disease in women, Circulation, 84, II
  2. Davey Smith G, 2007, Bio‐Social Surveys: Current Insight and Future Promise

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Metadata

Authors
Smith, G. D.
Affiliations
University of Bristol (GB)
Corresponding author
Smith, George Davey
Venue
Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2008-01-22
Volume
102
Issue
2
Pages
245-256
ISSN
  • 1742-7835 (ISSN-L)
  • 1742-7843
OpenAlex
W1564669788
Cited by
257
References
94
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 23
FWCI
2.04
Type
journal article
Language
en
Update notices
erratum (2009-10-13)
Open access
Locations
  • Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Explore Bristol Research (submittedVersion)
Funders
Medical Research Council
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Birth, Development, and Health
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods in Epidemiology
Keywords
prenatal exposure, offspring outcomes, paternal exposure, confounding, birth cohort studies, Mendelian randomization, causal inference, intrauterine environment
MeSH terms
Female, Genotype, Humans, Male, Pregnancy, Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects, Genetic Variation, Epidemiologic Studies, Maternal Exposure, Paternal Exposure

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