Improving rheumatoid arthritis comparative effectiveness research through causal inference principles: systematic review using a target trial emulation framework

Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases

Fecha de publicación: 7 May 2020

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-217200

Autores: Sizheng Steven Zhao, Houchen Lyu, Daniel H Solomon, Kazuki Yoshida

Background: Target trial emulation is an intuitive design framework that encourages investigators to formulate their comparative effectiveness research (CER) question as a hypothetical randomised controlled trial (RCT). Our aim was to systematically review CER studies in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to provide examples of design limitations that could be avoided using target trial emulation, and how these limitations might introduce bias.