15587 IUPAC Gold Book - confounding 10.1351/goldbook.15587 15587 current 1 Situation in which the effects of two processes are not distinguishable from one another: The distortion of the apparent effect of an exposure on risk brought about by the association of other factors which can influence the outcome. Relationship between the effects of two or more causal factors as observed in a set of data, such that it is not logically possible to separate the contribution which any single causal factor has made to an effect. Situation in which a measure of the effect of an exposure on risk is distorted because of the association of exposure with other factor(s) which influence the outcome under study. PAC, 2007, 79, 1153. 'Glossary of terms used in toxicology, 2nd edition (IUPAC Recommendations 2007)' on page 1195 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac200779071153) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/15587/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/15587/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/15587/plain Citation: 'confounding' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.15587 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-13T23:40:08+00:00