A proposal for assessing study quality: Biomonitoring, Environmental Epidemiology, and Short-lived Chemicals (BEES-C) instrument
- DOI
- Language of the publication
- English
- Date
- 2014-08-17
- Type
- Article
- Author(s)
- LaKind, Judy S.
- Sobus, Jon R.
- Goodman, Michael
- Barr, Dana Boyd
- Fürst, Peter
- Albertini, Richard J.
- Arbuckle, Tye E.
- Schoeters, Greet
- Tan, Yu-Mei
- Teeguarden, Justin
- Tornero-Velez, Rogelio
- Weisel, Clifford P.
- Publisher
- Elsevier
Abstract
The quality of exposure assessment is a major determinant of the overall quality of any environmental epidemiology study. The use of biomonitoring as a tool for assessing exposure to ubiquitous chemicals with short physiologic half-lives began relatively recently. These chemicals present several challenges, including their presence in analytical laboratories and sampling equipment, difficulty in establishing temporal order in cross-sectional studies, short- and long-term variability in exposures and biomarker concentrations, and a paucity of information on the number of measurements required for proper exposure classification. To date, the scientific community has not developed a set of systematic guidelines for designing, implementing and interpreting studies of short-lived chemicals that use biomonitoring as the exposure metric or for evaluating the quality of this type of research for WOE assessments or for peer review of grants or publications. We describe key issues that affect epidemiology studies using biomonitoring data on short-lived chemicals and propose a systematic instrument – the Biomonitoring, Environmental Epidemiology, and Short-lived Chemicals (BEES-C) instrument – for evaluating the quality of research proposals and studies that incorporate biomonitoring data on short-lived chemicals. Quality criteria for three areas considered fundamental to the evaluation of epidemiology studies that include biological measurements of short-lived chemicals are described: 1) biomarker selection and measurement, 2) study design and execution, and 3) general epidemiological study design considerations. We recognize that the development of an evaluative tool such as BEES-C is neither simple nor non-controversial. We hope and anticipate that the instrument will initiate further discussion/debate on this topic.
Plain language summary
Epidemiological research plays a critical role in assessing the effects of various chemical, physical, biological, and social exposures on human health. Within organizations where health policy recommendations are made, epidemiological research findings are typically evaluated using a weight-of-evidence (WOE) approach. A WOE assessment may be incomplete or misleading if it does not evaluate study quality to ensure that the conclusions are based on the strongest evidence available. In addition, study quality assessments for research at the study design stage or during peer review of manuscripts serve to enhance the overall quality of human exposure and health research. Exposure assessment is a major determinant of the overall quality of any environmental health study. The quality of the exposure assessment is intimately tied to the applicability of the data to the health outcome of interest. Biomonitoring of common environmental chemicals with short physiologic half-lives began relatively recently and these chemicals present several challenges. To date, the scientific community has not developed a set of systematic guidelines for designing, implementing and interpreting biomonitoring studies of these chemicals. Similarly, there is no published method for evaluating the quality of this type of research. Based on an international workshop held in April 2013, this report describes the key issues that affect human studies using biomonitoring data on chemicals with short physiologic half lives, and proposes a systematic scheme for evaluating the quality of research proposals and studies that incorporate biomonitoring data on short-lived chemicals. The scheme will serve as a tool to support comprehensive evaluations of the quality of biomonitoring research results, both at Health Canada and in other organizations.
Subject
- Health,
- Health and safety