New York University Relative Risk Discussion

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Relative Risk is the ratio of incidence of disease in the exposed group to that in Non-exposed group from a cohort/prospective study. If Relative Risk is larger than 1, it is a positive association; exposure may be a positive risk factor. If Relative Risk is smaller than 1, it is a negative association; exposure may be a protective factor. If Relative Risk is equal to 1, there is no association; the exposure appears to not affect risk. Attributable Risk is the amount of disease incidence which can be attributed to exposure in a prospective study. Population Attributable Risk is the reduction in incidence if the whole population were unexposed, comparing with actual exposure pattern. Relative Risk compares the risk of having a disease for not receiving a medical treatment against people receiving a treatment. It can also compare the risk of having side effects in drug treatment against the people not receiving the treatment. Attributable Risk and Population Attributable Risk tell the amount of risk prevented if we do not have certain exposure.

    For example, the relative risk of developing lung cancer (event) in smokers (exposed group) versus non-smokers (non-exposed group) would be the probability of developing lung cancer for smokers divided by the probability of developing lung cancer for nonsmokers.The relative risk does not provide any information about the absolute risk of the event occurring, but rather the higher or lower likelihood of the event in the exposure versus the non-exposure group (Tenny, & Hoffman, 2020).An example of attributable risk, lung cancer has many causes, including smoking cigarettes and exposure to indoor radon. One study showed that the AR% for cigarette smoking and lung cancer was 85%. That means 85% of lung cancers are caused by cigarette smoking. Another study showed that the AR% for radon gas exposure and lung cancer is between 3% and 20%, depending on factors like sex and smoking status. The population attributable risk of death relates to public health management of hypertension. As a measure of how important an element of hypertension is on a population, it is useful in deciding whether to undertake case finding and treatment in a community hypertension control program.

    Population attributable risks (PARs) are a useful tool to estimate the burden of risk factors in cancer incidence. Few studies estimated the PARs of oral cavity cancer to tobacco smoking alone, alcohol drinking alone and their joint consumption, but none performed analysis stratified by subsite, gender or age. Among the suspected risk factors of oral cavity cancer, only PAR to a family history of head and neck cancer was reported in two studies. This study emphasized the role of combined tobacco and alcohol consumption in the oral cavity cancer burden and indicates the proportion of cases attributable to other risk factors. Most of oral cavity cancers are attributable to concurrent smoking and drinking and would be potentially preventable through smoking or drinking cessation. This requires advocacy on both health policy and intervention on Oral Cancer (Radoï, 2015).

Reference

Tenny, S., Hoffman, M.R. (2020). Relative Risk. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430824/

Radoï, L., Menvielle, G., Cyr, D., Lapôtre-Ledoux, B., Stücker, I., et al. (2015). Population attributable risks of oral cavity cancer to behavioral and medical risk factors in France: results of a large population-based case–control study, the ICARE study. BMC Cancer, BioMed Central. 15 (1). pp.827. doi: 10.1186/s12885-015-1841-5.

Respond to the bold paragraph ABOVE by using one of the option below… in APA format with At least two references and a minimum of 200 words….. .(The List of References should not be older than 2016 and should not be included in the word count.)