Built-in bias in HCV clearance in acute HCV infection
Authors: Ali Kabir, Davood Khalili
Journal: Journal of Hepatology (2013)

Treatment optimization and prediction of HCV clearance in patients with acute HCV infectionJournal of HepatologyVol. 59Issue 2PreviewThe lack of consensus on the optimal timing, regimen, and duration of treatment, in patients with acute HCV infection, stimulates the research on both favourable outcome predictors and individualized treatment regimens. This study aimed at investigating the impact of IL28B SNP rs12979860 alone or in combination with HLA class II alleles in both predicting spontaneous viral clearance and individualizing treatment strategies for patients with HCV persistence, after acute HCV exposure. Full-Text PDF Reply to: “Built-in bias in HCV clearance in acute HCV infection”Journal of HepatologyVol. 60Issue 2PreviewTo the Editor: Full-Text PDF Open Access To the Editor: We read with interest the recent paper about hepatitis C virus (HCV) clearance in patients with acute HCV infection [[1]Mangia A. Santoro R. Copetti M. Massari M. Piazzolla V. Spada E. et al.Treatment optimization and prediction of HCV clearance in patients with acute HCV infection.J Hepatol. 2013; 59: 221-228Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (31) Google Scholar]. We are wondering why authors did not calculate risk ratio instead of odds ratio (OR) when they have run a cohort study? They can present how much is the incidence of HCV clearance and relative risk (RR) of factors affecting on such clearance, which is more precise than OR and real actual estimation of the strength of risk factor. Reporting RR besides OR in univariate analysis and then multivariable OR based on logistic regression makes it easy to interpret multivariable (adjusted) OR regarding “built-in-bias.” When the condition of interest has a high incidence and prospective data are available, like the study by Mangia et al. [[1]Mangia A. Santoro R. Copetti M. Massari M. Piazzolla V. Spada E. et al.Treatment optimization and prediction of HCV clearance in patients with acute HCV infection.J Hepatol. 2013; 59: 221-228Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (31) Google Scholar], it is usually better to report the RR instead of OR. Implementing OR as an estimate of the RR biases it in a direction opposite to the null hypothesis; that is, it tends to exaggerate the magnitude of the association. This is called built-in bias which is negligible when the disease is relatively rare [[2]Szklo M. Nieto J. Epidemiology beyond the basics.3rd ed. Jones and Bartlett, USA2014Google Scholar]. When the incidence is high; like spontaneous HCV clearance and non-responders to treatment in the present study, the bias can be substantial [[2]Szklo M. Nieto J. Epidemiology beyond the basics.3rd ed. Jones and Bartlett, USA2014Google Scholar]. In other words, built-in bias is responsible for the discrepancy between the RR and OR estimates. The value of this bias is equal to:1-q-1-q+,when q+ is the incidence (probability) in exposed and q− the incidence in unexposed individuals. For instance, regarding response to treatment and IL28B, 31 out of 40 IL28B CC carriers vs. 27 out of 40 IL28B XT carriers were responder; in this way q+ and q− would be 77.5 and 67.5 percent respectively, indicating built in bias of 1.4, which means OR overestimates RR estimation up to 1.4 fold. Regarding relationship between spontaneous HCV clearance and Jaundice or IL28B, built in bias is lower (about 1.3). This shows that the value of bias may be considerable in this study and similar researches and we should consider this issue for future studies as a common mistake which is undertaken by most researchers. Moreover, multivariate OR reported for HCV genotype and IL28B (15.6 and 8.7, respectively) as predictors of SVR are not correspondent to the results in the Table 3! Their value cannot be influenced very much after adjustment specifically considering such low number of sample size and event rate (outcome). On the other hand, according to their multivariable analysis treatment timing (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.89–0.97) and adherence (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.02–1.11) resulted independent predictors of SVR. The question here is why these ORs have such a narrow confidence interval despite so much adjustment in addition to such low sample size; while ribavirin use with a high OR had a wide confidence interval in that model simultaneously (OR 15.1, 95% CI 2.19–103.99, p = 0.006)? There are some other imperfect reportings in the article like percent of clearance for “No jaundice” in Table 2 (82.6 instead of 17.4) and using “univariate analysis” term instead of multivariable analysis after using baseline characteristics as covariates. The authors declared that they do not have anything to disclose regarding funding or conflict of interest with respect to this manuscript.