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Ecological and individual association: difficulty for adjusting ethnic difference of adiponectin in meta-analysis

International Journal of Obesity volume 36, page 1482 (2012)Cite this article

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Overviewing the past decade publication, Kuo and Halpern1 conducted the correlation analysis using values of plasma adipokines and body mass index (BMI) stratified by gender. In this letter, the author points out their methodological problems by targeting adiponectin in men. They concluded that there was no significant correlation between plasma adiponectin and BMI based on several studies for healthy adults.

First of all, they used mean values of twelve data sets (nine references). About six decades ago, Robinson2 presented caution to specify aggregate data from individual data. It is named ‘ecological fallacy’, and it was recently reprinted with advanced re-evaluation3 and commentary.4 Kuo and Halpern calculated Pearson’s correlation to be 0.26 without consideration of sampling number (it should be described as −0.26). They calculated the level of ecological association and concluded the lack of association between BMI and plasma adiponectin. Although some considerations are made on the number of sample and s.d., ecological association cannot predict individual association between two variables. Indeed, many variables are speculated to be associated with BMI or adiponectin. But there is a fundamental problem for aggregated data to be adjusted by such variables. As a basic recognition on epidemiological analysis, ecological association using aggregate data cannot become evidence to deny the individual association.

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References

  1. Kuo S-M, Halpern MM . Lack of association between body mass index and plasma adiponectin levels in healthy adults. Int J Obes Obes (Lond) 2011; e-pub ahead of print 1 March 2011; doi:10.1038/ijo.2011.20.

  2. Robinson WS . Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. Am Soc Rev 1950; 15: 351–357. (reprinted in Int J Epidemiol 2009; 38: 337–341).

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  3. Subramanian SV, Jones K, Kaddour A, Krieger N . Revisiting Robinson: the perils of individualistic and ecologic fallacy. Int J Epidemiol 2009; 38: 342–360.

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  4. Oakes JM . Commentary: individual, ecological and multilevel fallacies. Int J Epidemiol 2009; 38: 361–368.

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  5. Khoo CM, Sairazi S, Taslim S, Gardner D, Wu Y, Lee J et al. Ethnicity modifies the relationships of insulin resistance, inflammation, and adiponectin with obesity in a multiethnic Asian population. Diab Care 2011; 34: 1120–1126.

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  1. Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Nippon Medical School, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, Japan

    T Kawada

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  1. T Kawada
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Correspondence to T Kawada.

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Kawada, T. Ecological and individual association: difficulty for adjusting ethnic difference of adiponectin in meta-analysis. Int J Obes 36, 1482 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2011.228

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