CDM Projects

There is no apparent benefit in short-term clinical outcomes with fluoroquinolones compared with other antibiotics for the treatment of uncomplicated acute exacerbations of COPD. These findings support current recommendations that fluoroquinolone antibiotics should be reserved for treatment of severe exacerbations of COPD.

Fluoroquinolone antibiotic use was associated with a modest reduction in short-term clinical outcomes compared with other antibiotics among women with uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs). The modest benefit of fluoroquinolone antibiotics should be weighed against risk of rare but severe adverse effects of fluoroquinolones when clinicians are selecting first line treatment for women with uncomplicated UTIs.

This project was a critical appraisal of the association between use of thiazide and thiazide-like diuretics and risk of skin cancer.

Fluoroquinolone antibiotic use was not associated with better clinical outcomes compared with other antibiotics among patients treated for acute bacterial sinusitis. Although a relatively small proportion of acute bacterial sinusitis events were treated with fluoroquinolones, guidelines suggest limiting their use to second-line treatment only.

This study compares covariate selection strategies for confounding adjustment in secondary database analyses via Plasmode simulation: high-dimensional propensity score, machine learning algorithms: lasso, elastic net, random forest, etc.

We introduce an inverse probability weighted approach to rebalance covariates across treatment groups while mitigating the influence of differential misclassification bias.