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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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    1. Constantine E. Frangakis & Donald B. Rubin, 2002. "Principal Stratification in Causal Inference," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 21-29, March.
    2. Daniel Commenges & Anne Gégout‐Petit, 2009. "A general dynamical statistical model with causal interpretation," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 71(3), pages 719-736, June.
    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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    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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