Improved ways to study the effect of transient exposures on the risk of an illness, with application to flying and DVT

Funded Activity Summary

Improved methods of analysis will be developed to estimate the extent to which certain short-term activities trigger a particular illness and to determine who is most at risk. The new methods of analysis have many potential applications, including study of the effect of periods of intense exercise or intense alcohol consumption on the risk of a heart attack. Here we apply them to study the effect of air travel on illness due to blood clots in a vein (deep vein thrombosis, DVT), and the factors that put individuals at greatest risk. The extra understanding that our improved analysis of the data provides will accelerate research into ways to minimise the risk of flight-induced DVT and implementation of preventative measures in the travel industry. This has the potential to prevent many cases, and deaths, because the number of flights taken, globally, by individuals in a year is now in the billions. Specifically, dependence of flight-induced DVT on age, sex, being pregnant, recent fractures and having certain cancers will identify individuals at greatest risk, while dependence on the duration of the flight will identify flights that present greater risk. The development of these new methods of analysis will make a lasting contribution to public health research, because they can be used to study many short-term-activity - illnesses combinations. The methods will see increasing applications because the type of data they rely on, namely the complete history of exposures over time periods, will increasingly become available as electronic recording of activities becomes more common place. For example, electronic records of flights are now almost universal and bookings at squash courts and other sporting venues are increasingly recorded electronically. The computer software to apply the new methods of analysis will be made available to other researchers, to promote studies of this type.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2004

End Date: 01-01-2006

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $212,250.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Applied Statistics

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Air travel and deep vein thrombosis | Analysis of observations on time of first onset of illness | Case-crossover design and analysis | Designs of studies in which cases are their own controls | Transient exposure and risk of an illness | Triggers of adverse drug events | Triggers of injury | Triggers of myocardial infarction | Venous thromoembolism and pulmonary embolism

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