Environmental tobacco smoke exposure and lung cancer: A systematic review
Peter N Lee, John S Fry, Barbara A Forey, Jan S Hamling, Alison J Thornton
Peter N Lee, John S Fry, Barbara A Forey, Jan S Hamling, P.N. Lee Statistics and Computing Ltd., Sutton, Surrey SM2 5DA, United Kingdom
Alison J Thornton, Independent Consultant in Statistics, Okehampton EX20 1SG, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Lee PN, Fry JS and Forey BA planned the study; Hamling JS and Thornton AJ carried out the literature searches, assisted by Lee PN and Forey BA; Fry JS, Forey BA, Hamling JS and Thornton AJ carried out the data entry which was independently checked by one of these or Lee PN; Lee PN and Forey BA discussed any difficulties in interpreting published data or in the appropriate methods for derivation of RRs; Forey BA and Hamling JS conducted the main statistical analyses, and Fry JS the bias analyses along lines discussed and agreed with Lee PN; Lee PN drafted the paper, with the assistance of Thornton AJ, which was critically reviewed by the other authors.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Lee PN, Director of P.N. Lee Statistics and Computing Ltd., is an independent consultant in statistics and an advisor in the fields of epidemiology and toxicology to a number of tobacco, pharmaceutical and chemical companies including the sponsors of this study. Fry JS, Forey BA and Hamling JS are employees of, and Thornton AJ a consultant to, P.N. Lee Statistics and Computing Ltd.
Data sharing statement: Supplementary Files provide: (1) further information on the methods; (2) fuller description and results of the confounder/misclassification analyses; (3) description of reasons for rejection of some papers; and (4) fuller results of the main meta-analyses. Copies of the database files are available on request from the corresponding author at peterlee@pnlee.co.uk.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Peter N Lee, MA, Director, P.N. Lee Statistics and Computing Ltd., 17 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5DA, United Kingdom.
peterlee@pnlee.co.uk
Telephone: +44-20-86428265 Fax: +44-20-86422135
Received: November 24, 2015
Peer-review started: November 25, 2015
First decision: December 28, 2015
Revised: January 19, 2016
Accepted: March 9, 2016
Article in press: March 14, 2016
Published online: April 26, 2016
Processing time: 141 Days and 4.8 Hours
