1
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Luo S, Li W, Miao W, He Y. Identification and estimation of causal effects in the presence of confounded principal strata. Stat Med 2024. [PMID: 39075028 DOI: 10.1002/sim.10175] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/22/2024] [Revised: 07/05/2024] [Accepted: 07/08/2024] [Indexed: 07/31/2024]
Abstract
Principal stratification has become a popular tool to address a broad class of causal inference questions, particularly in dealing with non-compliance and truncation by death problems. The causal effects within principal strata, which are determined by joint potential values of the intermediate variable, also known as the principal causal effects, are often of interest in these studies. The analysis of principal causal effects from observational studies mostly relies on the ignorability assumption of treatment assignment, which requires practitioners to accurately measure as many covariates as possible so that all potential sources of confounders are captured. However, in practice, collecting all potential confounding factors can be challenging and costly, rendering the ignorability assumption questionable. In this paper, we consider the identification and estimation of causal effects when treatment and principal stratification are confounded by unmeasured confounding. Specifically, we establish the nonparametric identification of principal causal effects using a pair of negative controls to mitigate unmeasured confounding, requiring they have no direct effect on the outcome variable. We also provide an estimation method for principal causal effects. Extensive simulations and a leukemia study are employed for illustration.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shanshan Luo
- School of Mathematics and Statistics, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, China
| | - Wei Li
- Center for Applied Statistics and School of Statistics, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Wang Miao
- School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Yangbo He
- School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
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2
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Chen X, Harhay MO, Tong G, Li F. A BAYESIAN MACHINE LEARNING APPROACH FOR ESTIMATING HETEROGENEOUS SURVIVOR CAUSAL EFFECTS: APPLICATIONS TO A CRITICAL CARE TRIAL. Ann Appl Stat 2024; 18:350-374. [PMID: 38455841 PMCID: PMC10919396 DOI: 10.1214/23-aoas1792] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/09/2024]
Abstract
Assessing heterogeneity in the effects of treatments has become increasingly popular in the field of causal inference and carries important implications for clinical decision-making. While extensive literature exists for studying treatment effect heterogeneity when outcomes are fully observed, there has been limited development in tools for estimating heterogeneous causal effects when patient-centered outcomes are truncated by a terminal event, such as death. Due to mortality occurring during study follow-up, the outcomes of interest are unobservable, undefined, or not fully observed for many participants in which case principal stratification is an appealing framework to draw valid causal conclusions. Motivated by the Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Network (ARDSNetwork) ARDS respiratory management (ARMA) trial, we developed a flexible Bayesian machine learning approach to estimate the average causal effect and heterogeneous causal effects among the always-survivors stratum when clinical outcomes are subject to truncation. We adopted Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) to flexibly specify separate mean models for the potential outcomes and latent stratum membership. In the analysis of the ARMA trial, we found that the low tidal volume treatment had an overall benefit for participants sustaining acute lung injuries on the outcome of time to returning home but substantial heterogeneity in treatment effects among the always-survivors, driven most strongly by biologic sex and the alveolar-arterial oxygen gradient at baseline (a physiologic measure of lung function and degree of hypoxemia). These findings illustrate how the proposed methodology could guide the prognostic enrichment of future trials in the field.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xinyuan Chen
- Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Mississippi State University
| | - Michael O. Harhay
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
| | - Guangyu Tong
- Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health
| | - Fan Li
- Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health
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3
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Liu B, Wruck L, Li F. Principal stratification analysis of noncompliance with time-to-event outcomes. Biometrics 2024; 80:ujad016. [PMID: 38281770 DOI: 10.1093/biomtc/ujad016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/18/2023] [Revised: 10/02/2023] [Accepted: 11/15/2023] [Indexed: 01/30/2024]
Abstract
Post-randomization events, also known as intercurrent events, such as treatment noncompliance and censoring due to a terminal event, are common in clinical trials. Principal stratification is a framework for causal inference in the presence of intercurrent events. The existing literature on principal stratification lacks generally applicable and accessible methods for time-to-event outcomes. In this paper, we focus on the noncompliance setting. We specify 2 causal estimands for time-to-event outcomes in principal stratification and provide a nonparametric identification formula. For estimation, we adopt the latent mixture modeling approach and illustrate the general strategy with a mixture of Bayesian parametric Weibull-Cox proportional hazards model for the outcome. We utilize the Stan programming language to obtain automatic posterior sampling of the model parameters. We provide analytical forms of the causal estimands as functions of the model parameters and an alternative numerical method when analytical forms are not available. We apply the proposed method to the ADAPTABLE (Aspirin Dosing: A Patient-Centric Trial Assessing Benefits and Long-Term Effectiveness) trial to evaluate the causal effect of taking 81 versus 325 mg aspirin on the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. We develop the corresponding R package PStrata.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bo Liu
- Department of Statistical Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, United States
| | - Lisa Wruck
- Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC 27708, United States
- Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, NC 27701, United States
| | - Fan Li
- Department of Statistical Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, United States
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4
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Wang W, Tong G, Hirani SP, Newman SP, Halpern SD, Small DS, Li F, Harhay MO. A mixed model approach to estimate the survivor average causal effect in cluster-randomized trials. Stat Med 2024; 43:16-33. [PMID: 37985966 DOI: 10.1002/sim.9939] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2022] [Revised: 09/05/2023] [Accepted: 10/12/2023] [Indexed: 11/22/2023]
Abstract
In many medical studies, the outcome measure (such as quality of life, QOL) for some study participants becomes informatively truncated (censored, missing, or unobserved) due to death or other forms of dropout, creating a nonignorable missing data problem. In such cases, the use of a composite outcome or imputation methods that fill in unmeasurable QOL values for those who died rely on strong and untestable assumptions and may be conceptually unappealing to certain stakeholders when estimating a treatment effect. The survivor average causal effect (SACE) is an alternative causal estimand that surmounts some of these issues. While principal stratification has been applied to estimate the SACE in individually randomized trials, methods for estimating the SACE in cluster-randomized trials are currently limited. To address this gap, we develop a mixed model approach along with an expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate the SACE in cluster-randomized trials. We model the continuous outcome measure with a random intercept to account for intracluster correlations due to cluster-level randomization, and model the principal strata membership both with and without a random intercept. In simulations, we compare the performance of our approaches with an existing fixed-effects approach to illustrate the importance of accounting for clustering in cluster-randomized trials. The methodology is then illustrated using a cluster-randomized trial of telecare and assistive technology on health-related QOL in the elderly.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wei Wang
- Clinical Trials Methods and Outcomes Lab, Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Guangyu Tong
- Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
- Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA
- Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA
| | | | - Stanton P Newman
- School of Health Sciences, City University London, London, UK
- Division of Medicine, University College London, London, UK
| | - Scott D Halpern
- Clinical Trials Methods and Outcomes Lab, Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Dylan S Small
- Department of Statistics and Data Science, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Fan Li
- Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA
- Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Michael O Harhay
- Clinical Trials Methods and Outcomes Lab, Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
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5
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Luo S, Li W, He Y. Causal inference with outcomes truncated by death in multiarm studies. Biometrics 2023; 79:502-513. [PMID: 34435657 DOI: 10.1111/biom.13554] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/10/2020] [Revised: 08/10/2021] [Accepted: 08/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
It is challenging to evaluate causal effects when the outcomes of interest suffer from truncation-by-death in many clinical studies; that is, outcomes cannot be observed if patients die before the time of measurement. To address this problem, it is common to consider average treatment effects by principal stratification, for which, the identifiability results and estimation methods with a binary treatment have been established in previous literature. However, in multiarm studies with more than two treatment options, estimation of causal effects becomes more complicated and requires additional techniques. In this article, we consider identification, estimation, and bounds of causal effects with multivalued ordinal treatments and the outcomes subject to truncation-by-death. We define causal parameters of interest in this setting and show that they are identifiable either using some auxiliary variable or based on linear model assumption. We then propose a semiparametric method for estimating the causal parameters and derive their asymptotic results. When the identification conditions are invalid, we derive sharp bounds of the causal effects by use of covariates adjustment. Simulation studies show good performance of the proposed estimator. We use the estimator to analyze the effects of a four-level chronic toxin on fetal developmental outcomes such as birth weight in rats and mice, with data from a developmental toxicity trial conducted by the National Toxicology Program. Data analyses demonstrate that a high dose of the toxin significantly reduces the weights of pups.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shanshan Luo
- School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Wei Li
- Center for Applied Statistics and School of Statistics, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Yangbo He
- School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
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6
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Nevo D, Gorfine M. Causal inference for semi-competing risks data. Biostatistics 2021; 23:1115-1132. [PMID: 34969069 PMCID: PMC9566449 DOI: 10.1093/biostatistics/kxab049] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2021] [Revised: 12/05/2021] [Accepted: 12/05/2021] [Indexed: 01/01/2023] Open
Abstract
The causal effects of Apolipoprotein E $\epsilon4$ allele (APOE) on late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) and death are complicated to define because AD may occur under one intervention but not under the other, and because AD occurrence may affect age of death. In this article, this dual outcome scenario is studied using the semi-competing risks framework for time-to-event data. Two event times are of interest: a nonterminal event time (age at AD diagnosis), and a terminal event time (age at death). AD diagnosis time is observed only if it precedes death, which may occur before or after AD. We propose new estimands for capturing the causal effect of APOE on AD and death. Our proposal is based on a stratification of the population with respect to the order of the two events. We present a novel assumption utilizing the time-to-event nature of the data, which is more flexible than the often-invoked monotonicity assumption. We derive results on partial identifiability, suggest a sensitivity analysis approach, and give conditions under which full identification is possible. Finally, we present and implement nonparametric and semiparametric estimation methods under right-censored semi-competing risks data for studying the complex effect of APOE on AD and death.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Malka Gorfine
- Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
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7
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Park C, Kang H. Assumption-Lean Analysis of Cluster Randomized Trials in Infectious Diseases for Intent-to-Treat Effects and Network Effects. J Am Stat Assoc 2021. [DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2021.1983437] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Chan Park
- Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI
| | - Hyunseung Kang
- Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI
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8
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Bornkamp B, Rufibach K, Lin J, Liu Y, Mehrotra DV, Roychoudhury S, Schmidli H, Shentu Y, Wolbers M. Principal stratum strategy: Potential role in drug development. Pharm Stat 2021; 20:737-751. [PMID: 33624407 DOI: 10.1002/pst.2104] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2020] [Revised: 12/01/2020] [Accepted: 02/05/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
A randomized trial allows estimation of the causal effect of an intervention compared to a control in the overall population and in subpopulations defined by baseline characteristics. Often, however, clinical questions also arise regarding the treatment effect in subpopulations of patients, which would experience clinical or disease related events post-randomization. Events that occur after treatment initiation and potentially affect the interpretation or the existence of the measurements are called intercurrent events in the ICH E9(R1) guideline. If the intercurrent event is a consequence of treatment, randomization alone is no longer sufficient to meaningfully estimate the treatment effect. Analyses comparing the subgroups of patients without the intercurrent events for intervention and control will not estimate a causal effect. This is well known, but post-hoc analyses of this kind are commonly performed in drug development. An alternative approach is the principal stratum strategy, which classifies subjects according to their potential occurrence of an intercurrent event on both study arms. We illustrate with examples that questions formulated through principal strata occur naturally in drug development and argue that approaching these questions with the ICH E9(R1) estimand framework has the potential to lead to more transparent assumptions as well as more adequate analyses and conclusions. In addition, we provide an overview of assumptions required for estimation of effects in principal strata. Most of these assumptions are unverifiable and should hence be based on solid scientific understanding. Sensitivity analyses are needed to assess robustness of conclusions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Björn Bornkamp
- Clinical Development and Analytics, Novartis, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Kaspar Rufibach
- Methods, Collaboration, and Outreach Group (MCO), Department of Biostatistics, Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Jianchang Lin
- Statistical & Quantitative Sciences (SQS), Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Yi Liu
- Nektar Therapeutics, San Francisco, California, USA
| | - Devan V Mehrotra
- Clinical Biostatistics, Merck & Co., Inc., North Wales, Pennsylvania, USA
| | | | - Heinz Schmidli
- Clinical Development and Analytics, Novartis, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Yue Shentu
- Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA
| | - Marcel Wolbers
- Methods, Collaboration, and Outreach Group (MCO), Department of Biostatistics, Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Basel, Switzerland
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9
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Gilbert PB, Blette BS, Shepherd BE, Hudgens MG. Post-randomization Biomarker Effect Modification Analysis in an HIV Vaccine Clinical Trial. JOURNAL OF CAUSAL INFERENCE 2020; 8:54-69. [PMID: 33777613 PMCID: PMC7996712 DOI: 10.1515/jci-2019-0022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
While the HVTN 505 trial showed no overall efficacy of the tested vaccine to prevent HIV infection over placebo, markers measuring immune response to vaccination were strongly correlated with infection. This finding generated the hypothesis that some marker-defined vaccinated subgroups were partially protected whereas others had their risk increased. This hypothesis can be assessed using the principal stratification framework (Frangakis and Rubin, 2002) for studying treatment effect modification by an intermediate response variable, using methods in the sub-field of principal surrogate (PS) analysis that studies multiple principal strata. Unfortunately, available methods for PS analysis require an augmented study design not available in HVTN 505, and make untestable structural risk assumptions, motivating a need for more robust PS methods. Fortunately, another sub-field of principal stratification, survivor average causal effect (SACE) analysis (Rubin, 2006) - which studies effects in a single principal stratum - provides many methods not requiring an augmented design and making fewer assumptions. We show how, for a binary intermediate response variable, methods developed for SACE analysis can be adapted to PS analysis, providing new and more robust PS methods. Application to HVTN 505 supports that the vaccine partially protected individuals with vaccine-induced T-cells expressing certain combinations of functions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter B. Gilbert
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, 98109, U.S.A
| | - Bryan S. Blette
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27599, U.S.A
| | - Bryan E. Shepherd
- Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, 37232, U.S.A
| | - Michael G. Hudgens
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27599, U.S.A
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10
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Lu J, Zhang Y, Ding P. Sharp bounds on the relative treatment effect for ordinal outcomes. Biometrics 2019; 76:664-669. [PMID: 31742664 DOI: 10.1111/biom.13148] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2019] [Accepted: 09/04/2019] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
For ordinal outcomes, the average treatment effect is often ill-defined and hard to interpret. Echoing Agresti and Kateri, we argue that the relative treatment effect can be a useful measure, especially for ordinal outcomes, which is defined as γ = pr { Y i ( 1 ) > Y i ( 0 ) } - pr { Y i ( 1 ) < Y i ( 0 ) } , with Y i ( 1 ) and Y i ( 0 ) being the potential outcomes of unit i under treatment and control, respectively. Given the marginal distributions of the potential outcomes, we derive the sharp bounds on γ , which are identifiable parameters based on the observed data. Agresti and Kateri focused on modeling strategies under the assumption of independent potential outcomes, but we allow for arbitrary dependence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiannan Lu
- Analysis and Experimentation, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington
| | - Yunshu Zhang
- Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina
| | - Peng Ding
- Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, California
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11
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Jiang Z, Ding P. Using missing types to improve partial identification with application to a study of HIV prevalence in Malawi. Ann Appl Stat 2018. [DOI: 10.1214/17-aoas1133] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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12
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Yin Y, Cai Z, Zhou XH. Using secondary outcome to sharpen bounds for treatment harm rate in characterizing heterogeneity. Biom J 2018; 60:879-892. [DOI: 10.1002/bimj.201700049] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/19/2017] [Revised: 03/04/2018] [Accepted: 03/05/2018] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Yunjian Yin
- School of Mathematical Sciences; Peking University; Beijing 100871 China
| | - Zheng Cai
- School of Mathematical Sciences; Peking University; Beijing 100871 China
| | - Xiao-Hua Zhou
- Department of Biostatistics; University of Washington; Seattle WA 98195 USA
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13
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Yang F, Ding P. Using survival information in truncation by death problems without the monotonicity assumption. Biometrics 2018; 74:1232-1239. [PMID: 29665626 DOI: 10.1111/biom.12883] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2017] [Revised: 02/01/2018] [Accepted: 03/01/2018] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
In some randomized clinical trials, patients may die before the measurement time point of their outcomes. Even though randomization generates comparable treatment and control groups, the remaining survivors often differ significantly in background variables that are prognostic to the outcomes. This is called the truncation by death problem. Under the potential outcomes framework, the only well-defined causal effect on the outcome is within the subgroup of patients who would always survive under both treatment and control. Because the definition of the subgroup depends on the potential values of the survival status that could not be observed jointly, without making strong parametric assumptions, we cannot identify the causal effect of interest and consequently can only obtain bounds of it. Unfortunately, however, many bounds are too wide to be useful. We propose to use detailed survival information before and after the measurement time point of the outcomes to sharpen the bounds of the subgroup causal effect. Because survival times contain useful information about the final outcome, carefully utilizing them could improve statistical inference without imposing strong parametric assumptions. Moreover, we propose to use a copula model to relax the commonly-invoked but often doubtful monotonicity assumption that the treatment extends the survival time for all patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fan Yang
- Department of Biostatistics and Informatics, University of Colorado Denver, Aurora, Colorado 80045, U.S.A
| | - Peng Ding
- Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, U.S.A
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14
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Wang L, Zhou XH, Richardson TS. Identification and estimation of causal effects with outcomes truncated by death. Biometrika 2017; 104:597-612. [PMID: 29430035 PMCID: PMC5793679 DOI: 10.1093/biomet/asx034] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2016] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
It is common in medical studies that the outcome of interest is truncated by death, meaning that a subject has died before the outcome could be measured. In this case, restricted analysis among survivors may be subject to selection bias. Hence, it is of interest to estimate the survivor average causal effect, defined as the average causal effect among the subgroup consisting of subjects who would survive under either exposure. In this paper, we consider the identification and estimation problems of the survivor average causal effect. We propose to use a substitution variable in place of the latent membership in the always-survivor group. The identification conditions required for a substitution variable are conceptually similar to conditions for a conditional instrumental variable, and may apply to both randomized and observational studies. We show that the survivor average causal effect is identifiable with use of such a substitution variable, and propose novel model parameterizations for estimation of the survivor average causal effect under our identification assumptions. Our approaches are illustrated via simulation studies and a data analysis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linbo Wang
- Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115,
| | - Xiao-Hua Zhou
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195,
| | - Thomas S Richardson
- Department of Statistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195,
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15
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Gilbert PB, Gabriel EE, Huang Y, Chan IS. Surrogate Endpoint Evaluation: Principal Stratification Criteria and the Prentice Definition. JOURNAL OF CAUSAL INFERENCE 2015; 3:157-175. [PMID: 26722639 PMCID: PMC4692254 DOI: 10.1515/jci-2014-0007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/05/2023]
Abstract
A common problem of interest within a randomized clinical trial is the evaluation of an inexpensive response endpoint as a valid surrogate endpoint for a clinical endpoint, where a chief purpose of a valid surrogate is to provide a way to make correct inferences on clinical treatment effects in future studies without needing to collect the clinical endpoint data. Within the principal stratification framework for addressing this problem based on data from a single randomized clinical efficacy trial, a variety of definitions and criteria for a good surrogate endpoint have been proposed, all based on or closely related to the "principal effects" or "causal effect predictiveness (CEP)" surface. We discuss CEP-based criteria for a useful surrogate endpoint, including (1) the meaning and relative importance of proposed criteria including average causal necessity (ACN), average causal sufficiency (ACS), and large clinical effect modification; (2) the relationship between these criteria and the Prentice definition of a valid surrogate endpoint; and (3) the relationship between these criteria and the consistency criterion (i.e., assurance against the "surrogate paradox"). This includes the result that ACN plus a strong version of ACS generally do not imply the Prentice definition nor the consistency criterion, but they do have these implications in special cases. Moreover, the converse does not hold except in a special case with a binary candidate surrogate. The results highlight that assumptions about the treatment effect on the clinical endpoint before the candidate surrogate is measured are influential for the ability to draw conclusions about the Prentice definition or consistency. In addition, we emphasize that in some scenarios that occur commonly in practice, the principal strata sub-populations for inference are identifiable from the observable data, in which cases the principal stratification framework has relatively high utility for the purpose of effect modification analysis, and is closely connected to the treatment marker selection problem. The results are illustrated with application to a vaccine efficacy trial, where ACN and ACS for an antibody marker are found to be consistent with the data and hence support the Prentice definition and consistency.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter B. Gilbert
- Vaccine Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, 98109, U.S.A
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98105, U.S.A
| | - Erin E. Gabriel
- Biostatistics Branch, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, 20817, U.S.A
| | - Ying Huang
- Vaccine Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, 98109, U.S.A
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98105, U.S.A
| | - Ivan S.F. Chan
- Merck & Co., Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, 08889, U.S.A
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16
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Richardson A, Hudgens MG, Gilbert PB, Fine JP. Nonparametric Bounds and Sensitivity Analysis of Treatment Effects. Stat Sci 2014; 29:596-618. [PMID: 25663743 PMCID: PMC4317325 DOI: 10.1214/14-sts499] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
This paper considers conducting inference about the effect of a treatment (or exposure) on an outcome of interest. In the ideal setting where treatment is assigned randomly, under certain assumptions the treatment effect is identifiable from the observable data and inference is straightforward. However, in other settings such as observational studies or randomized trials with noncompliance, the treatment effect is no longer identifiable without relying on untestable assumptions. Nonetheless, the observable data often do provide some information about the effect of treatment, that is, the parameter of interest is partially identifiable. Two approaches are often employed in this setting: (i) bounds are derived for the treatment effect under minimal assumptions, or (ii) additional untestable assumptions are invoked that render the treatment effect identifiable and then sensitivity analysis is conducted to assess how inference about the treatment effect changes as the untestable assumptions are varied. Approaches (i) and (ii) are considered in various settings, including assessing principal strata effects, direct and indirect effects and effects of time-varying exposures. Methods for drawing formal inference about partially identified parameters are also discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amy Richardson
- Quantitative Analyst, Google Inc., Mountain View, California 94043, USA
| | - Michael G. Hudgens
- Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA
| | - Peter B. Gilbert
- Member, Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention (SCHARP), Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington 98109-1024, USA
| | - Jason P. Fine
- Professor, Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA
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