Performance of instrumental variable methods in cohort and nested case-control studies: A simulation study

Abstract

PURPOSE: Instrumental variable (IV) analysis is becoming increasingly popular to adjust for confounding in observational pharmacoepidemiologic research. One of the prerequisites of an IV is that it is strongly associated with exposure; if it is weakly associated with exposure, IV estimates are reported to be biased. We aimed to assess the performance of IV estimates in various (pharmaco-)epidemiologic settings. METHODS: Data were simulated for continuous/binary exposure, outcome and IV in cohort and nested case-control (NCC) designs with different incidences of the outcome. Pearson's correlation, point bi-serial correlation, odds ratio (OR), and F-statistic were used to assess the IV-exposure association. Two-stage analysis was performed to estimate the exposure effect. RESULTS: For all types of IV and exposure in the cohort and NCC designs, IV estimates were extremely unstable and biased when the IV was very weakly associated with exposure (e.g. Pearson's correlation <0.15 for continuous or OR <2.0 for binary IV and exposure; although specific cut-off values depend on simulation settings). For stronger IVs, estimates were unbiased and become less variable compared with weaker IVs in the case of continuous and binary (risk difference scale) outcomes. For a similar IV-exposure association (e.g. OR = 1.4 and 5% incidence of the outcome), the variability of the estimates was more pronounced in the NCC (standard deviation = 2.37, case : control = 1:5) compared with the cohort design (standard deviation = 1.14). The variability was even more pronounced for rare (