Causal association temporality

Factors that indicate a causal association between triazolam and adverse behavioral reactions include corroborating case reports and sleep laboratory studies in the literature, reports of reactions in otherwise normal persons, acute onset and temporal relationship to reactions with initial dose, spontaneous recoveries and return to normalcy with drug discontinuation, and occurrences of positive rechallenge. Also, the high benzodiazepine receptor affinity with triazolam has been postulated as a possible biological mechanism. 

Many medications have been implicated in AP, but a causal association is difficult to confirm because ethical and practical considerations prevent rechallenge with the suspected agent. " Table 39-2 lists medications according to their certainty of causing AP. A definite association implies a temporal relationship of drug administration to... 

The subject of what evidence is necessary to conclude that an exposure is causally associated with disease has received much discussion over the years. In 1964, the seminal report to the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health [United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW 1964)] published criteia by which to evaluate whether an exposure was causally related to disease. These criteria were consistency, strength of association, specificity of the association, temporal relationship of the association, and coherence of the association. 

Temporal Relationships of Adverse Events. The temporal relationship between duration of product exposure and development of an adverse event is important in assessing causality. But how can data on temporal relationships be systematically summarized in a database containing thousands or even hundreds of thousands of subjects Temporal relationships cannot be clearly elicited if only frequencies of adverse events between treatment and control groups are compared. There can be many disparities in the subjects time of exposure or time at risk. Toxic manifestations of drugs may not occur until several months or even years after the initial exposure to the drug. How do we systematically assess delayed toxicity of a previously prescribed drug from the effect of a newly prescribed drug Such a scenario occurred with reported cases of pancreatitis associated with valproic acid therapy, in which some cases appeared several years after therapy [2]. 

Any untoward medical occurrence in a patient or clinical investigation subject administered a pharmaceutical product and that does not necessarily have a causal relationship with this treatment. An AE can therefore be any unfavorable and unintended sign (including an abnormal laboratory finding), symptom, or disease temporally associated with the use of a medicinal (investigational) product, whether or not related to the medicinal (investigational) product. 

To obtain the mass emissions of pollutants from e-waste recycling processes, it is essential that the inputs of pollutants are truly e-waste related. To fulfill this requirement, a causal analysis is desirable. However, the concept of causation is rather problematic because causal mechanisms are complex [26]. Nonetheless, we are compelled to identify causes, in an attempt to minimize the uncertainties associated with our estimates. In this chapter, the strict empiricist, David Hume s empirical criterion, was adopted. This approach requires only a combination of (1) e-waste processing and environmental pollution are associated in space and time (contiguity) (2) e-waste processing precede to environmental pollution (temporal succession) and (3) e-waste processing is always conjoined with environmental pollution (consistent conjunction). These are always the cases judged from a number of previous studies [6, 27-35]. 

A remote causal relationship between a drug and an event exists when the temporal association is such that the drug would not have had any reasonable association with the observed event. 

Causality can be considered in analytical or experimental epidemiological studies. That involves assessing the statistical association, the temporal relationship between exposure and outcome, and the elimina... 

AR reports are, for the most part, only associations. A temporal or possible association is sufficient for a report to be made. ReportingofanAR does not imply a definitive causal... 

Acetazolamide toxicity was suspected, because of the temporal association between drug treatment and the onset of the neurological sjmptoms, together with metabolic acidosis. Gerstmann sjmdrome is usually due to an acute stroke. Although a brain CT scan was negative, such an event was likely in this patient, who had a history of cerebrovascular disease and multiple risk factors, and a causal relation to acetazolamide must be considered tenuous. 

Adverse effects on the nervous system that have at least temporally been associated with rubella vaccination include myehtis, myeloradiculitis (SEDA-2, 268) (SEDA-20, 292), meningomyelitis (SEDA-10,291), ence-phahtis (SEDA-5, 308), peripheral neuropathy (SEDA-12, 284), facial or peripheral paresthesia (SEDA-11, 295) (SEDA-12, 284), and carpal tunnel syndrome (SEDA-12, 284). In many of these cases the causal relation was doubtful. The authors of the report of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (1991) entitled Adverse Effects of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines (38) considered that there was insufficient evidence to indicate either the presence or absence of a causal relation between RA 27/3 rubella vaccine and radiculoneuritis and other neuropathies. 

Criteria similar to those listed by Adams (2003) are used to establish causality and are derivatives of Koch s postulates and Hume s criteria. The list includes (1) strength of association, (2) consistency of association, (3) specificity of association, (4) time order or temporality, (5) biological gradient over space and time, (6) experimental evidence available, and (7) biological plausibility. In many instances, especially at a regional scale and over long periods of time, meeting the requirements for each of these criteria can be difficult. 

Temporal Relationship of the Observed Association. A causal interpretation is strengthened when exposure is known to precede development of the disease. This is among the strongest criteria for an inference of causality. 

Certain basic criteria in epidemiology (Susser 1986) have been widely accepted and appear to be equally applicable to ecoepidemiology (Fox 1991). It should, however, be clearly appreciated that these techniques are not designed to establish unambiguous causal relationships, but rather to indicate which criteria may most usefully be used to provide a balanced evaluation in support—or in contradiction—of a given hypothesis it should be noted that the relatively loose term association is consistently used. These five criteria are (1) consistency, (2) strength, (3) specificity, (4) temporal relationship, and (5) coherence. 

A case of an amniotic fluid embolism causing a maternal cardiorespiratory arrest was temporally associated with ingestion of castor oil by a woman at week 40 of gestation, although causality could not be determined (Steingrub et al. 1988). 

Understanding the electronic movement in physical atomic as being driven by the conneeted and correlated functions especially by the (temporally) causal Green-fimction/quantum propagators Describing the physical atom as a semiclassical description of quantum motion, i.e., merely quantum than classical yet with certain orders of Planck constant contributions in electronic orbits in atom Learning the difference between the second and the fourth order of path integral expansion of the quantum amplitude of electronic orbits as quantifies in the associated partition functions ... 

In the context of medical causation. Sir Austin Bradford Hill, suggested in 1965 that to imply causation from the observation of association we should consider its (1) strength, (2) consistency, (3) specificity - the restriction to specific conditions, (4) temporality - the order of events, (5) dose-response relationship, (6) theoretical plausibility, and (7) coherence - the consistency with other related phenomena. Although these guidelines were presented in the context of medicine and epidemiology, it would be very usefiil to keep these necessary conditions for causality in mind when evaluating crash causation on the basis of statistical associations. 

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