Bayesian Inference for Multivariate Meta-Regression With a Partially Observed Within-Study Sample Covariance Matrix

2015
Multivariate meta-regression models are commonly used in settings where the response variable is naturally multidimensional. Such settings are common in cardiovascular and diabetes studies where the goal is to study cholesterol levels once a certain medication is given. In this setting, the natural multivariate endpoint is low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides (TG) (LDL-C, HDL-C, TG). In this article, we examine study level (aggregate) multivariate meta-data from 26 Merck sponsored double-blind, randomized, active, or placebo-controlled clinical trials on adult patients with primary hypercholesterolemia. Our goal is to develop a methodology for carrying out Bayesian inference for multivariate meta-regression models with study level data when the within-study sample covariance matrix S for the multivariate response data is partially observed. Specifically, the proposed methodology is based on postulating a multivariate random effects regression model with an unknown within-study covariance matrix Sigma in which we treat the within-study sample correlations as missing data, the standard deviations of the within-study sample covariance matrix S are assumed observed, and given Sigma, S follows a Wishart distribution. Thus, we treat the off-diagonal elements of S as missing data, and these missing elements are sampled from the appropriate full conditional distribution in a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling scheme via a novel transformation based on partial correlations. We further propose several structures (models) for Sigma, which allow for borrowing strength across different treatment arms and trials. The proposed methodology is assessed using simulated as well as real data, and the results are shown to be quite promising. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION
页码:528-544|卷号:110|期号:510
ISSN:0162-1459
收录类型
SSCI
发表日期
2015
学科领域
循证社会科学-方法
国家
美国
语种
英语
DOI
10.1080/01621459.2015.1006065
其他关键词
RANDOM-EFFECTS METAANALYSIS; MODELS
EISSN
1537-274X
资助机构
National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human DevelopmentUnited States Department of Health & Human ServicesNational Institutes of Health (NIH) - USANIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD); NIHUnited States Department of Health & Human ServicesNational Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA [GM 70335, CA 74015]; NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTEUnited States Department of Health & Human ServicesNational Institutes of Health (NIH) - USANIH National Cancer Institute (NCI) [P01CA142538] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
资助信息
The authors thank the editor, the associate editor, and the anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments and suggestions that have led to a much improved version of the article. Dr. Kim's research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr. Chen and Dr. Ibrahim's research was partially supported by NIH grants #GM 70335 and #CA 74015.
被引频次(WOS)
7
被引更新日期
2022-01
来源机构
University of Connecticut National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) University of North Carolina University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Merck & Company
关键词
Aggregate covariates Heterogeneity Multiple trials Normal regression models Random effects Variable selection