ADEPT
ADEPT: Abnormal Doppler Enteral Prescription Trial (ISRCTN87351483) was funded by Action Medical Research (SP4006) and investigated whether early (24-48 hours after birth) or late (120-144 hours after birth) introduction of milk feeds was a risk factor for necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) in a population of 404 infants born preterm and growth-restricted, following abnormal antenatal Doppler blood flow velocities [11]. Consent and randomisation occurred in the first 2 days after birth. There was no difference found in the incidence of NEC between the two groups, however there was interest in the association between feed type (formula/fortifier or exclusive mother/donor breast milk) and the development of NEC. Breast milk is one of few factors believed to reduce the risk of NEC that has been widely adopted into clinical practice, despite a paucity of high quality population based data [12, 13]. However, due to lack of equipoise it would not be ethical or feasible to conduct a trial randomising newborn infants to formula or breast milk.
With additional funding from Action Medical Research (GN2506), the authors used a matched nested case-control design to investigate the association between feed type and the development of severe NEC, defined as Bell’s staging Stage II or III [14], using detailed daily feed log data from the ADEPT trial. The feed type and quantity of feed was recorded daily until an infant had reached full feeds and had ceased parenteral nutrition, or until 28 days after birth, whichever was longest. Using this information, infants were classified according to the following predefined exposures:
- Exposure to formula milk or fortifier in the first 14 days of life
- Exposure to formula milk or fortifier in the first 28 days of life
- Any prior exposure to formula milk or fortifier
- Change in feed type (between formula, fortifier or breast milk) within the previous 7 days.
In the remainder of the methods section we discuss the challenges of conducting this analysis and practical issues encountered in applying the matched nested case-control methodology. In the results section we present data from different aspects of the analysis, to illustrate the utility of this approach in answering the research question.
Cohort time axis
For the main trial analysis, time of randomisation was defined as time zero, which is the conventional approach given that events occurring prior to randomisation cannot be influenced by the intervention under investigation. However, for the nested case-control analysis, time zero was defined as day of delivery because age in days was considered easier to interpret, and also it was possible for an outcome event to occur prior to randomisation. Infants were followed up until their exit time, which was defined by the first occurrence of NEC, death or the last daily feed log record.
Case definition
An infant was defined as a case at their first recorded incidence of severe NEC, defined as Bell’s staging Stage II or III [14]. Infants could only be included as a case once; subsequent episodes of NEC in the same infant were not counted. Once an infant had been identified as a case, they could not be included in any future risk sets for other cases, even if the NEC episode had been resolved.
Risk set definition
One of the major challenges was identifying an appropriate risk set from which controls could be sampled, whilst also allowing the analysis to incorporate the time dependent feed log data and adjust for known confounders. A diagnosis of NEC has a crucial impact on the subsequent feeding of an infant, therefore it was essential that the analysis only included exposure to non-breast milk feeds prior to the onset of NEC. A standard case-control analysis would have produced misleading results in this context, as infants would have been defined as a cases if they had experienced NEC prior to the end of the study period, regardless of the timing of the event in relation to exposure to non-breast milk. Using a matched nested case-control design allowed us to match an infant with a diagnosis of NEC (case) at a given point in time (days from delivery) to infants with similar characteristics (with respect to other important confounding factors), who had not experienced NEC at the failure time of the case. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of this process. Each time an outcome event occurred (case), infants that were still at risk were eligible to be selected as a control (risk set). A matching algorithm was used to select a sample of controls with similar characteristics from this risk set. Infants selected as controls could go on to become a case themselves, and could also be included in the risk sets for other cases.
Selection of matching factors
An important consideration was the appropriate selection of matching factors as well as identifying the optimum mechanism for matching. Sex, gestational age and birth weight were considered to be clear candidates for matching factors, as they are all associated with the development NEC. Gestational age and birth weight in particular are both likely to impact the infant’s feeding and thus their exposure to non-breast milk feeds. Both gestational age and birth weight were matched simultaneously, because of the strong collinearity between gestational age and birth weight, illustrated in Figure 2. This was achieved by minimising the Mahalanobis distance from the case to prospective controls of the same sex [15]. That is, selecting the control closest in gestational age and birth weight to the case while taking into account the correlation between these characteristics.
Typically, treatment allocation would be incorporated as a matching factor since in a secondary analysis it is a nuisance factor imposed by the trial design, which should be accounted for. However, in this example, the ADEPT allocation is associated with likelihood of exposure, since it directly influences the feeding regime. For example, an infant randomised to receive early introduction of feeds is more likely to be exposed to non-breast milk feeds in the first 14 days (44%) than an infant randomised to late introduction of feeds (23%). The main trial results also demonstrated no evidence of association with the outcome (NEC) and therefore there was a concern about the potential for overmatching. Overmatching is caused by inappropriate selection of matching factors (i.e. factors which are not associated with the outcome of interest), which may harm the statistical efficiency of the analysis [16]. Therefore, we did not include the ADEPT allocation as a matching factor, but we conduct an unadjusted and adjusted analysis by trial arm, to examine its impact on the results.
Selection of controls
Another important consideration was the method used to randomly select controls from each risk set for each case. This can be performed with or without replacement and including or excluding the case in the risk set. We chose the recommended option of sampling without replacement and excluding the case from the risk set, which produces the optimal unbiased estimate of relative risk, with greater statistical efficiency [17, 18]. However, infants could be included in multiple risk sets and be selected more than once as a control. We also included future cases of NEC as controls in earlier risk sets, as their exclusion can also lead to biased estimates of relative risk [19].
Number of controls
In standard case-control studies it has been shown that there is little statistical efficiency gained from having more than four matched controls relative to each case [20, 21]. Using five controls is only 4% more efficient than using four, therefore there is no added benefit in using additional controls if a cost is attached, for example taking extra biological samples in a prospective cohort setting. However gains in statistical efficiency are possible by using more than four controls if the probability of exposure among controls is low (<0.1) [4, 5]. Neither of these were issues for this particular analysis, as there were no additional costs involved in using more controls and prevalence of the defined exposures to non-breast milk was over 20% among infants without a diagnosis of NEC. However, there was a concern that including additional controls with increasing distance from the gestational age and birth weight of the case may undermine the matching algorithm. Also, increasing the number of controls sampled per case would lead to an increase in repeated sampling, resulting in larger number of duplicates present in the overall matched control population. This was a particular concern as control duplication was most likely to occur for infants with the lowest birth weight and gestational ages, from which there is a much smaller pool of control infants to sample from. This would have resulted in a small number of infants (with low birth weight and gestational age) being sampled multiple times and having disproportionate weighting in the matched control sample. Therefore, we limited the number of matched controls to four per case.
Statistical analysis
The baseline characteristics of infants with NEC, the matched control group, and all infants with no diagnosis of NEC (non-cases) were compared. Numbers (with percentages) were presented for binary and categorical variables, and means (and standard deviations) or medians (with interquartile range and/or range) for continuous variables. Cases were matched to four controls with the same sex and smallest Mahalanobis distance based on gestational age and birth weight. Conditional logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratio of developing NEC for cases compared matched controls for each predefined exposure with 95% confidence intervals. Unadjusted odds ratios were calculated, along with estimates adjusting for ADEPT allocation.