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Dealing with death when studying disease or physiological marker: the stochastic system approach to causality

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  • Daniel Commenges

    (INSERM, U 1219, Bordeaux University)

Abstract

The stochastic system approach to causality is applied to situations where the risk of death is not negligible. This approach grounds causality on physical laws, distinguishes system and observation and represents the system by multivariate stochastic processes. The particular role of death is highlighted, and it is shown that local influences must be defined on the random horizon of time of death. We particularly study the problem of estimating the effect of a factor V on a process of interest Y, taking death into account. We unify the cases where Y is a counting process (describing an event) and the case where Y is quantitative; we examine the case of observations in continuous and discrete time and we study the issue of whether the mechanism leading to incomplete data can be ignored. Finally, we give an example of a situation where we are interested in estimating the effect of a factor (blood pressure) on cognitive ability in elderly.

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  • Daniel Commenges, 2019. "Dealing with death when studying disease or physiological marker: the stochastic system approach to causality," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 381-405, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:lifeda:v:25:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10985-018-9454-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10985-018-9454-3
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Mélanie Prague & Daniel Commenges & Julia Drylewicz & Rodolphe Thiébaut, 2012. "Treatment Monitoring of HIV-Infected Patients based on Mechanistic Models," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 68(3), pages 902-911, September.
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    13. Mélanie Prague & Daniel Commenges & Jon Michael Gran & Bruno Ledergerber & Jim Young & Hansjakob Furrer & Rodolphe Thiébaut, 2017. "Dynamic models for estimating the effect of HAART on CD4 in observational studies: Application to the Aquitaine Cohort and the Swiss HIV Cohort Study," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 294-304, March.
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    1. Richard J. Cook & Jerald F. Lawless, 2020. "Failure time studies with intermittent observation and losses to follow‐up," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1035-1063, December.

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