We read the study by Mason et al Reference Mason, Rimmer, Richman, Garg and Johnson1 with great interest. The authors conclude that there is an association between middle-ear disease and schizophrenia which may have aetiological significance. However, the authors have based their conclusions on a case–control study, which is susceptible to biases and effects of confounding factors; we would like to raise concerns about these conclusions.
First, we would like to highlight the strong possibility of selection bias as this study design is particularly prone to it. In this case, at the sample selection stage, no precautions were taken to ensure that the person selecting the patients was masked to the study hypothesis. This could lead to bias towards selecting patients with middle-ear disease and schizophrenia.
Case–control studies are more susceptible to bias and confounding factors than are cohort studies. In order to establish the association, it is recommended that we should have an odds ratio >4, Reference Sackett, Straus, Richardson, Rosenberg and Haynes2 because the higher the odds ratio, the stronger the association. However, Mason et al have concluded about the association when the odds ratio is <4, which could be as a result of bias alone. This raises strong doubts about the validity of the authors' conclusions.
We would request that the authors clarify these issues.
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