Original reportsComparison of Self-Reported and Physician-Reported Antidepressant Medication Use
Introduction
Self-reported medication histories obtained in pharmacoepidemiologic case-control studies are subject to non-differential misclassification and to recall bias. While previous studies have evaluated the accuracy of self-reported use of oral contraceptives and estrogen replacement therapy, few have examined non-hormonal medication use. Generally, recall of hormonal drug use was quite accurate, and recall of non-hormonal medication use poor 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. The accuracy of self-reported antidepressant medication use is not known. However, it is important because many studies use self-reported antidepressant medication history. For example, epidemiological studies have evaluated the hypothesis that antidepressants may be associated with cancer risk 14, 15, 16, and the hypothesis that antidepressant use maybe associated with age at menopause (17). Studies have also been conducted to describe temporal trends in antidepressant medication use 18, 19.
Misclassification of antidepressant exposure may bias relative risk estimates associated with antidepressant use, and may result in inaccurate prevalence estimates.
The present study compared antidepressant medication use reported by female cancer cases and controls participating in the Health Canada Enhanced Cancer Surveillance (ECS) study, with prescription information documented in physicians’ medical records, in an attempt to assess the potential for misclassification of antidepressant exposure and recall bias.
Section snippets
Data Source and Data Collection
Female cases and controls were sampled from the Ontario component of the ECS study, a case-control study designed to evaluate the association between environmental factors and various cancers. The ECS study identified cancer cases, aged 20–74 years and diagnosed during 1995–96, using the Ontario Cancer Registry. Controls were randomly sampled from the population-based assessment rolls of the Ontario Ministry of Finance and were frequency matched, within 5-year age groupings, to the cases. Data
Results
Non-participants did not differ markedly from participating women with respect to most characteristics (Table 1), suggesting that response bias was minimal. Age group, education level, clinical depression, cancer site, and current smoking status were not associated with subject participation. Cases were more likely to participate than controls, as were subjects with higher household income. A slightly lower proportion of participants reported antidepressant use as compared to those not
Discussion
This study found substantial agreement between subject- and physician-reported `ever’ antidepressant medication use, and antidepressant medication names, while moderate agreement was observed for duration of use, dose, and date of first use. The degree of agreement did not differ markedly between cases and controls, except in regard to duration, where agreement was somewhat greater for cases than controls.
Similar studies of other non-hormonal medications reported poorer recall accuracy.
Acknowledgements
This research was performed within the context of the Enhanced Cancer Surveillance project, sponsored by the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, Health Canada. Michelle Cotterchio is a research student of the National Cancer Institute of Canada supported with funds provided by the Canadian Cancer Society. We thank members of the Ontario Enhanced Cancer Surveillance Steering Committee and the study staff of ECS, particularly Bonnie James, the Senior Project Manager. We also thank Drs. Yang
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The international prevalence of antidepressant use before, during, and after pregnancy: A systematic review and meta-analysis of timing, type of prescriptions and geographical variability
2020, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :When we stratified by definition of SSRI use, we found a higher prevalence estimate for studies using pharmacy records (prescription/dispensing data) compared to studies relying on self-report. There is some evidence that self-reported psychiatric medication use is less accurate (Haapea et al., 2010; Van den Brandt et al., 1991), as a result of social desirability bias or self-stigmatization (Cotterchio et al., 1999; Nielsen et al., 2008; Rauma et al., 2013), but a recent large population-based study showed the opposite: a very good agreement between antidepressant self-report and prescription data (Hafferty et al., 2018). The observed difference might therefore rather reflect a difference in included study population.
Self-reported medication use validated through record linkage to national prescribing data
2018, Journal of Clinical EpidemiologyCitation Excerpt :Self-report can be compromised by a number of factors, including not understanding the question, poor recall, and intended nondisclosure [4]. There is no consensus on patient-level factors predisposing to discordance between medication self-report and gold standard measures, but previous reports have implicated advancing age [9,19], being unmarried [19,21], number of medications regularly dispensed [18,22], suffering poor health [19], and lower educational attainment [21]. Within medication classes, there is some evidence that psychiatric medications are less likely to be accurately self-reported [19,22].
The association between antidepressant use and hemoglobin A1C in older adults
2017, Geriatric NursingCitation Excerpt :This study was also limited by cross-sectional design, length of time between exposure and outcome measurement and use of self-reported medication data. However, previous research has found self-reported antidepressant medication data to agree with medication use data collected from other sources.26,27 One study performed in an older sample found moderate agreement between report of antidepressant medications taken in the past 6 months and pharmacy records with less agreement for medications taken within the last 2 or 8 years.28