IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/lifeda/v28y2022i3d10.1007_s10985-022-09555-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Longitudinal mediation analysis of time-to-event endpoints in the presence of competing risks

Author

Listed:
  • Tat-Thang Vo

    (Ghent University
    University of Pennsylvania)

  • Hilary Davies-Kershaw

    (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

  • Ruth Hackett

    (King’s College London)

  • Stijn Vansteelandt

    (Ghent University
    London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

Abstract

This proposal is motivated by an analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), which aims to investigate the role of loneliness in explaining the negative impact of hearing loss on dementia. The methodological challenges that complicate this mediation analysis include the use of a time-to-event endpoint subject to competing risks, as well as the presence of feedback relationships between the mediator and confounders that are both repeatedly measured over time. To account for these challenges, we introduce path-specific effect proportional (cause-specific) hazard models. These extend marginal structural proportional (cause-specific) hazard models to enable effect decomposition on either the cause-specific hazard ratio scale or the cumulative incidence function scale. We show that under certain ignorability assumptions, the path-specific direct and indirect effects indexing this model are identifiable from the observed data. We next propose an inverse probability weighting approach to estimate these effects. On the ELSA data, this approach reveals little evidence that the total effect of hearing loss on dementia is mediated through the feeling of loneliness, with a non-statistically significant indirect effect equal to 1.01 (hazard ratio (HR) scale; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.99 to 1.05).

Suggested Citation

  • Tat-Thang Vo & Hilary Davies-Kershaw & Ruth Hackett & Stijn Vansteelandt, 2022. "Longitudinal mediation analysis of time-to-event endpoints in the presence of competing risks," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 380-400, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:lifeda:v:28:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10985-022-09555-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s10985-022-09555-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10985-022-09555-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10985-022-09555-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zheng Wenjing & van der Laan Mark, 2017. "Longitudinal Mediation Analysis with Time-varying Mediators and Exposures, with Application to Survival Outcomes," Journal of Causal Inference, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-24, September.
    2. Steen, Johan & Loeys, Tom & Moerkerke, Beatrijs & Vansteelandt, Stijn, 2017. "medflex: An R Package for Flexible Mediation Analysis using Natural Effect Models," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 76(i11).
    3. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2014. "Inference on Treatment Effects after Selection among High-Dimensional Controlsâ€," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(2), pages 608-650.
    4. Heejung Bang & James M. Robins, 2005. "Doubly Robust Estimation in Missing Data and Causal Inference Models," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 962-973, December.
    5. Torben Martinussen & Stijn Vansteelandt & Per Kragh Andersen, 2020. "Subtleties in the interpretation of hazard contrasts," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 833-855, October.
    6. Snorri Bjorn Rafnsson & Martin Orrell & Eleonora d’Orsi & Eef Hogervorst & Andrew Steptoe & Deborah CarrPhD, 2020. "Loneliness, Social Integration, and Incident Dementia Over 6 Years: Prospective Findings From the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing," Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Gerontological Society of America, vol. 75(1), pages 114-124.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Zhao, Jun, 2020. "Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 101-122.
    2. Paul Frédéric Blanche & Anders Holt & Thomas Scheike, 2023. "On logistic regression with right censored data, with or without competing risks, and its use for estimating treatment effects," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 441-482, April.
    3. Everding, Jakob & Marcus, Jan, 2020. "The effect of unemployment on the smoking behavior of couples," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 154-170.
    4. Antonelli Joseph & Cefalu Matthew, 2020. "Averaging causal estimators in high dimensions," Journal of Causal Inference, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 92-107, January.
    5. Decker, Simon & Schmitz, Hendrik, 2016. "Health shocks and risk aversion," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 156-170.
    6. Graham, Bryan S. & Pinto, Cristine Campos de Xavier, 2022. "Semiparametrically efficient estimation of the average linear regression function," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(1), pages 115-138.
    7. Hugo Bodory & Martin Huber & Lukáš Lafférs, 2022. "Evaluating (weighted) dynamic treatment effects by double machine learning [Identification of causal effects using instrumental variables]," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(3), pages 628-648.
    8. Marianne BLÉHAUT & Xavier D'HAULTFOEUILLE & Jérémy L'HOUR & Alexandre B. TSYBAKOV, 2020. "An alternative to synthetic control for models with many covariates under sparsity," Working Papers 2020-17, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    9. Su, Miaomiao & Wang, Ruoyu & Wang, Qihua, 2022. "A two-stage optimal subsampling estimation for missing data problems with large-scale data," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    10. Matias D Cattaneo & Michael Jansson & Xinwei Ma, 2019. "Two-Step Estimation and Inference with Possibly Many Included Covariates," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(3), pages 1095-1122.
    11. Ertefaie Ashkan & Asgharian Masoud & Stephens David A., 2018. "Variable Selection in Causal Inference using a Simultaneous Penalization Method," Journal of Causal Inference, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-16, March.
    12. Farrell, Max H., 2015. "Robust inference on average treatment effects with possibly more covariates than observations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-23.
    13. Victor Chernozhukov & Juan Carlos Escanciano & Hidehiko Ichimura & Whitney K. Newey & James M. Robins, 2022. "Locally Robust Semiparametric Estimation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1501-1535, July.
    14. Michela Bia & Martin Huber & Lukáš Lafférs, 2024. "Double Machine Learning for Sample Selection Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 958-969, July.
    15. Antonio R. Linero, 2023. "Prior and posterior checking of implicit causal assumptions," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 79(4), pages 3153-3164, December.
    16. Kuanhao Jiang & Rajarshi Mukherjee & Subhabrata Sen & Pragya Sur, 2022. "A New Central Limit Theorem for the Augmented IPW Estimator: Variance Inflation, Cross-Fit Covariance and Beyond," Papers 2205.10198, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    17. Zhichao Jiang & Shu Yang & Peng Ding, 2022. "Multiply robust estimation of causal effects under principal ignorability," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 84(4), pages 1423-1445, September.
    18. Martin Wiegand, 2019. "Do early-ending conditional cash transfer programs crowd out school enrollment?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-053/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    19. Ruoyao Shi, 2021. "An Averaging Estimator for Two Step M Estimation in Semiparametric Models," Working Papers 202105, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    20. Joseph Antonelli & Georgia Papadogeorgou & Francesca Dominici, 2022. "Causal inference in high dimensions: A marriage between Bayesian modeling and good frequentist properties," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 100-114, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:lifeda:v:28:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10985-022-09555-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.