Question

Go to the AHRQ Website Research Summary Page: Research - Effective Health Care Program

Pick a condition and an article for that condition. Pay close attention to the research that was done to draw the conclusions. Prepare a summary of the findings, including what type of research was done (exploratory, historical, descriptive, causal, correlative, evaluation, and experimental), sampling (probability and non probability; simple random, stratified, cluster, judgment, quota, and convenience), and whether it was quantitative or qualitative research.

Answer 1

Article: Observed Association Between Antidepressant Use and Pneumonia Risk Was Confounded by Comorbidity Measures

Summary from the article:

In this article, an associative (correlative) type study is performed to measure the association between Antidepressant Use and Pneumonia Risk. The study tells how the presence or absence of Antidepressant Use has an effect on the presence or absence of Pneumonia Risk. For that the odd ratios are used to find the exposure of Antidepressant Use on Pneumonia Risk. (This is quantitative research analyssis because the dependent variable were measured in numbers)

The hypothesis for the test is,

Null hypothesis; Ho:  Use of antidepressants by elderly patients increases the risk of hospitalization for pneumonia.

Alternative hypothesis; Ha:  Use of antidepressants by elderly patients does not increases the risk of hospitalization for pneumonia.

Study design method: The case-control studies is used for observation. In case-control study, there are two groups are defined, 1) cases (cases of the hospitalization for pneumonia) and 2) controls group. Accordig to the researcher, 12,044 cases of the hospitalization for pneumonia (the primary outcome) and 48,176 for controls groups were identified. And the outcome of the study are,

The odds ratio (OR) for any antidepressant use, adjusting for age, sex, and calendar year was 1.61

After further adjustment for comorbidity measures, the OR was 0.89

The seperate study for aspiration pneumonia were also carried out for  159 cases of hospitalization for aspiration pneumonia and 636 for controls.  The outcome of the study are,

The OR for any antidepressant use, adjusted for age, sex, and calendar year was 1.45

After further adjustment for comorbidity measures, the OR was 0.63

(Note:

Odd Ratio = 1 means that no exposure of antidepressants on pneumonia,

Odd Ratio > 1 means there is a higher odds (or chance) of exposure of antidepressants on pneumonia

Odd Ratio < 1 means there is a lesser odds (or chance) of exposure of antidepressants on pneumonia.)

Conclusion: The results shows that the null hypothesis is true and we can say that use of antidepressants by elderly patients increases the risk of hospitalization for pneumonia or for aspiration pneumonia. And there is a significant effect of comfounding variable, comorbidity measures on study.