As the hospital epidemiologist you are asked to investigate the effect of a drug
ID: 62396 • Letter: A
Question
As the hospital epidemiologist you are asked to investigate the effect of a drug suspected of causing malformations in newborn infants when the drug in question is taken by pregnant women during the course of their pregnancies. As your sample you will use the next 200 single births occurring in a given hospital. For each birth a medication history will be taken from the new mother and from her doctor; in addition, you will review medical records to verify use of the drug. [N.B.: These mothers are considered to have been followed prospectively during the entire course of their pregnancies, because a complete and accurate record of drug use was maintained during pregnancy.]
The resultant data are:
Forty mothers have taken the suspected drug during their pregnancies. Of these mothers, 35 have delivered malformed infants. In addition, 10 other infants are born with malfunctions.
The relative risk between exposure to the drug and malformations is
A.16
B. 12
C.14
D. 10
E. 15
Explanation / Answer
E. 15
Relative risk = (A/A+B)/(C/C+D) A = The number of people who both had the exposure and developed the disease, B = The number of people who had the exposure but did not develop the disease, C = The number of people who did not have the exposure but did develop the disease, D = The number of people who neither had the exposure nor developed the disease.
A = 35, B = 5, C = 10, D = 160 (since the total cases studied were 200 single births)
Computing all the data in the formula above, the answer comes to 14.87 rounded off to 15.
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