Many factors (e.g., sample size, design, research question, and investigators' characteristics) may confound the association as they are associated with both study results and the possibility of publication.
SES could confound the association between diabetes and mortality because it is associated with both diabetes prevalence and mortality.
If these risk factors were strongly associated with dioxin exposure, they could confound the association between dioxins and CVD, biasing it either upward or downward.
Smoking was not associated with any hematopoietic malignancy and did not appear to confound the association between radon and leukemia.
However, pre-existing psychiatric disorders may confound the association between these smoking cessation agents and psychiatric disturbances.
However, other genetic variants and environmental factors may confound the association and produce the inconsistent results commonly found in the literature.
Kidney donors comprise a highly screened population without risk factors such as diabetes and inflammation, which invariably confound the association between CKD and cardiovascular disease.
We selected covariates based on a priori hypotheses of the characteristics likely to confound the association of interest.
But studies have been unable to account for genetic influences that might confound the association between domestic violence and lower intelligence.
Since passive smoking may confound the association between COPD and lung cancer, sensitivity analyses focused on the four studies that adjusted for SHS exposure [17], [64], [66], [74].
The 4 major haplotypes from the SNPs were consistently associated with CRP level, but not with other risk factors that might confound the association between CRP and CIMT.
