Abstract
Case-control studies are important in developing clinical and public health knowledge. The STROBE statement (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational Studies in Epidemiology) was developed to establish a checklist of items that should be included in articles reporting observational studies. Our aim was to analyze whether the psychiatric case-control articles published in Brazilian journals with CAPES Qualis rating B1/B2 in 2009 conformed with the STROBE statement. Descriptive study on psychiatric papers published in Brazilian journals, within the Postgraduate Medical Program on Psychiatry, at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. All psychiatric case-control studies from Brazilian Qualis B1/B2 journals of psychiatry, neurology and public health in 2009 were analyzed. The four most specific items of the STROBE statement were used to evaluate whether these studies fitted within the case-control parameters: 1) selection of cases and controls; 2) controlling for bias; 3) statistical analysis; and 4) presentation of results. Sixteen case-control studies were identified, of which eleven (68.75%) were in psychiatry-focused journals. From analysis using the STROBE statement, all of the articles conformed with item 1; two (12.5%) completely conformed with item 2; none completely conformed with item 3; and only three (18.8%) conformed with item 4. The case-control studies analyzed here did not completely conform with the four STROBE statement items for case-control design. In view of the inadequate methodology of the published studies, these findings justify focusing on research and methodology and expanding the investigations on adherence of studies to their designs.
Highlights
Rational healthcare practice requires knowledge of the etiology, pathogenesis, diagnostics, prognosis and treatment of illnesses
Qualis is a journal classification system in which the impact factors are based on the CAPES system, which is used to evaluate the scientific production of postgraduate programs.[6]
The publication types were classified as original articles, letters, editorials, book reviews and special articles
Summary
Rational healthcare practice requires knowledge of the etiology, pathogenesis, diagnostics, prognosis and treatment of illnesses. Case-control studies can be interestingly useful when the outcome studied is rare or delayed and when the exposure is difficult to randomize Conducting these studies can be challenging because of the great possibility of bias.[2] These studies cannot estimate the incidence or prevalence of a disease, they provide descriptive information about the characteristics of cases and, most importantly, an estimate of the magnitude of the association between each predicting variable and the presence or absence of disease. These estimates are expressed in the form of odds ratios, which can be approximated to the relative risk if the prevalence of the disease is not too high.[3,4]
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