E. Vittinghoff et Ns. Padian, ATTRIBUTABLE RISK OF EXPOSURES ASSOCIATED WITH SEXUALLY-TRANSMITTED DISEASE, The Journal of infectious diseases, 174, 1996, pp. 182-187
Attributable risk combines information on the prevalence of an exposur
e with a measure of the associated increment in risk, providing an est
imate of the proportion of incident or prevalent disease that might be
avoided by eliminating the exposure. Thus, attributable risk identifi
es exposures most productively targeted by public health interventions
. Attributable risk can be defined as the ratio of average excess risk
to average risk. As with other measures of association between exposu
re and disease computed from observational data, adjustment must be ma
de for confounding factors. Estimates of attributable risk are highly
variable. Nonetheless, attributable risk retains its usefulness as an
approximate measure of the public health significance of exposures ass
ociated with acquisition of sexually transmitted disease, provided it
is estimated and interpreted cautiously.