Jorjani Biomedicine Journal

Background & Objective: Inability to measure exact exposure in epidemiological studies is a common problem in many studies, especially cross-sectional studies. Depending on the extent of misclassification, results may be affected. Existing methods for solving this problem require a lot of time and money and it is not practical for some of the exposures. Recently, new methods have been proposed in 1:1 matched case–control studies that have solved these problems to some extent. In the present study we have aimed to extend the existing Bayesian method to adjust for misclassification in matched case–control Studies with 1:2 matching.

Methods: Here, the standard Dirichlet prior distribution for a multinomial model was extended to allow the data of exposure–disease (OR) parameter to be imported into the model excluding other parameters. Information that exist in literature about association between exposure and disease were used as prior information about OR. In order to correct the misclassification Sensitivity Analysis was accomplished and the results were obtained under three Bayesian Methods.

Results: The results of naïve Bayesian model were similar to the classic model. The second Bayesian model by employing prior information about the OR, was heavily affected by these information.

The third proposed model provides maximum bias adjustment for the risk of heavy metals, smoking and drug abuse. This model showed that heavy metals are not an important risk factor although raw model (logistic regression Classic) detected this exposure as an influencing factor on the incidence of lung cancer. Sensitivity analysis showed that third model is robust regarding to different levels of Sensitivity and Specificity.

Conclusion: The present study showed that although in most of exposures the results of the second and third model were similar but the proposed model would be able to correct the misclassification to some extent.