Correction to Water hardness and atopic dermatitis in the first year of life in the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study

Abstract

Ezzamouri B, Palys TJ, Jackson BP, Coto SD, Madan JC, Flohr C, Karagas MR, Peacock JL. Water hardness and atopic dermatitis in the first year of life in the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study. Clin Exp Allergy. 2023 Mar;53(3):362–366. doi: 10.1111/cea.14272. PMID: 36541020.

There was an error in the computation of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) which has affected all analyses that included CaCO₃.

The corrected median CaCO₃ is 67.3 mg/L with interquartile range 32–114. These replace the values reported in the text of the paper. Table 1 included eczema by various characteristics including CaCO₃; eczema prevalence by CaCO₃ quartiles, corrected, is given in the (partial) table 1 below.

Table 2 reported odds of eczema in the presence of an interaction of CaCO₃ by family history of eczema. These models have been re-run using the corrected CaCO₃ values (see table 2 corrected below).

In the text, estimated odds ratios (OR) are reported for the group of children living in areas with a high level of CaCO₃ and who had a family history of eczema. Using the corrected table 2 values these are corrected to i) any eczema (OR = 1.68; 95% CI 0.97–2.96), with a significant trend (p = 0.02) and ii) eczema lasting more than 2 days (1.63; 95% CI 0.92–2.87), test for trend, p = 0.20.

The OR and 95% CIs for these analyses were similar following multiple imputation of missing data, with corrected values: 1.48 (0.8–2.13) for any eczema and 1.44 (0.7–2.02) for eczema lasting more than 2 days.

We note that while model estimates have changed slightly, the overall trends, interpretation and conclusions are unchanged.

The corrected Additional Information can be found at:

https://osf.io/ukzm5/files/osfstorage/67fe5df52fe33ed79bd56627

We sincerely apologize for this error.