{"doi":"10.1093/aje/kwae234","title":"Use of sensitivity analyses to assess uncontrolled confounding from unmeasured variables in observational, active comparator pharmacoepidemiologic studies: a systematic review","abstract":"Understanding the potential for, and direction and magnitude of uncontrolled confounding is critical for generating informative real-world evidence. Many sensitivity analyses are available to assess robustness of study results to residual confounding, but it is unclear how researchers are using these methods. We conducted a systematic review of published active-comparator cohort studies of drugs or biologics to summarize use of sensitivity analyses aimed at assessing uncontrolled confounding from an unmeasured variable. We reviewed articles in 5 medical and 7 epidemiologic journals published between January 1, 2017, and June 30, 2022. We identified 158 active-comparator cohort studies: 76 from medical and 82 from epidemiologic journals. Residual, unmeasured, or uncontrolled confounding was noted as a potential concern in 93% of studies, but only 84 (53%) implemented at least 1 sensitivity analysis to assess uncontrolled confounding from an unmeasured variable. The most common analyses were E-values among medical journal articles (21%) and restriction on measured variables among epidemiologic journal articles (22%). Researchers must rigorously consider the role of residual confounding in their analyses and the best sensitivity analyses for assessing this potential bias. This article is part of a Special Collection on Pharmacoepidemiology.","journal":"American Journal of Epidemiology","year":2024,"id":440896,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9517,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1252866,"name":"Megan Delgado","orcid":"0000-0002-5568-568X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1136735,"name":"I‐Hsuan Su","orcid":"0000-0002-2916-4397","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1252867,"name":"Catherine Wiener","orcid":"0000-0001-9625-0319","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1252868,"name":"Clement O Acheampong","orcid":"0000-0001-8840-025X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":96241,"name":"Charles Poole","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":352751,"name":"Jessie K. Edwards","orcid":"0000-0002-1741-335X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":894332,"name":"Kenneth Quinto","orcid":"0000-0003-2251-4160","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":426828,"name":"Til Stürmer‎","orcid":"0000-0002-9204-7177","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":387620,"name":"Jennifer L. Lund","orcid":"0000-0002-1108-0689","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1252869,"name":"Jie Li","orcid":"0000-0001-8181-7140","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1253365,"name":"Nahleen Lopez","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":630841,"name":"John Concato","orcid":"0000-0003-2846-0503","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":430332,"name":"Michele Jönsson Funk","orcid":"0000-0002-3756-7540","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":589725,"name":"Chase D. Latour","orcid":"0000-0002-9362-2516","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":146,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:01:01.842286Z","pmid":"39098826","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}