Estimating haplotype effects for survival data

Thomas Scheike, Torben Martinussen, J Silver

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Genetic association studies often investigate the effect of haplotypes on an outcome of interest. Haplotypes are not observed directly, and this complicates the inclusion of such effects in survival models. We describe a new estimating equations approach for Cox's regression model to assess haplotype effects for survival data. These estimating equations are simple to implement and avoid the use of the EM algorithm, which may be slow in the context of the semiparametric Cox model with incomplete covariate information. These estimating equations also lead to easily computable, direct estimators of standard errors, and thus overcome some of the difficulty in obtaining variance estimators based on the EM algorithm in this setting. We also develop an easily implemented goodness-of-fit procedure for Cox's regression model including haplotype effects. Finally, we apply the procedures presented in this article to investigate possible haplotype effects of the PAF-receptor on cardiovascular events in patients with coronary artery disease, and compare our results to those based on the EM algorithm.
Original languageEnglish
JournalBiometrics
Volume66
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)705-15
Number of pages11
ISSN0006-341X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010

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