Dataset Information

Integrating informative priors from experimental research with Bayesian methods: an example from radiation epidemiology.

ABSTRACT: Informative priors can be a useful tool for epidemiologists to handle problems of sparse data in regression modeling. It is sometimes the case that an investigator is studying a population exposed to two agents, X and Y, where Y is the agent of primary interest. Previous research may suggest that the exposures have different effects on the health outcome of interest, one being more harmful than the other. Such information may be derived from epidemiologic analyses; however, in the case where such evidence is unavailable, knowledge can be drawn from toxicologic studies or other experimental research. Unfortunately, using toxicologic findings to develop informative priors in epidemiologic analyses requires strong assumptions, with no established method for its utilization. We present a method to help bridge the gap between animal and cellular studies and epidemiologic research by specification of an order-constrained prior. We illustrate this approach using an example from radiation epidemiology.

SUBMITTER: Hamra G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3607314 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Integrating informative priors from experimental research with Bayesian methods: an example from radiation epidemiology.

Hamra Ghassan G Richardson David D Maclehose Richard R Wing Steve S

Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) 20130101 1

Informative priors can be a useful tool for epidemiologists to handle problems of sparse data in regression modeling. It is sometimes the case that an investigator is studying a population exposed to two agents, X and Y, where Y is the agent of primary interest. Previous research may suggest that the exposures have different effects on the health outcome of interest, one being more harmful than the other. Such information may be derived from epidemiologic analyses; however, in the case where suc ...[more]

PMID: 23222512

Similar Datasets

Project description:Cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) and cleft palate only (CPO) are common congenital malformations. Numerous epidemiologic studies have shown an increased risk for orofacial clefts among children whose mothers smoked during early pregnancy; however, there is concern that the results of these studies may have been biased because of exposure misclassification. The purpose of this study is to use previous research on the reliability of self-reported cigarette smoking to produce corrected point estimates (and associated credible intervals) of the effect of maternal smoking on children's risk of clefts.We accounted for misclassification using 4 Bayesian models that made different assumptions about the sensitivity and specificity of self-reported maternal smoking data. We used results from previous studies to specify the prior distributions for sensitivity and specificity of reporting and used Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms to calculate the posterior distribution of the effect of maternal smoking on children's risk for CL/P and CPO.After correcting for potential sources of misclassification in data from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study, we found an increased risk of CL/P among children born to mothers who smoked during early pregnancy (posterior odds ratio [OR] = 1.6, 95% credible interval = 1.1-2.2). The posterior effect of smoking on CPO provided less evidence of effect (posterior OR = 1.1, 95% credible interval = 0.7-1.7).Our results lend some credibility to the hypothesis that periconceptional maternal smoking increases the risk of a child being born with CL/P. The results concerning CPO provide no overall evidence of effect, although the estimates were relatively imprecise. We suggest that future research should emphasize validity studies, especially those of differential reporting, rather than replicating existing analyses of the relationship between maternal smoking and clefts. We discuss how our approach is also applicable to evaluating misclassification in a wide range of exposure-outcome scenarios.

Dataset Information

Integrating informative priors from experimental research with Bayesian methods: an example from radiation epidemiology.

Publications

Integrating informative priors from experimental research with Bayesian methods: an example from radiation epidemiology.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets