Dataset Information

Predictive cluster level surrogacy in the presence of interference.

ABSTRACT: Surrogate evaluation is a difficult problem that is made more so by the presence of interference. Our proposed procedure can allow for relatively easy evaluation of surrogates for indirect or spill-over clinical effects at the cluster level. Our definition of surrogacy is based on the causal-association paradigm (Joffe and Greene, 2009. Related causal frameworks for surrogate outcomes. Biometrics65, 530-538), under which surrogates are evaluated by the strength of the association between a causal treatment effect on the clinical outcome and a causal treatment effect on the candidate surrogate. Hudgens and Halloran (2008, Toward causal inference with interference. Journal of the American Statistical Association103, 832-842) introduced estimators that can be used for many of the marginal causal estimands of interest in the presence of interference. We extend these to consider surrogates for not just direct effects, but indirect and total effects at the cluster level. We suggest existing estimators that can be used to evaluate biomarkers under our proposed definition of surrogacy. In our motivating setting of a transmission blocking malaria vaccine, there is expected to be no direct protection to those vaccinated and predictive surrogates are urgently needed. We use a set of simulated data examples based on the proposed Phase IIb/III trial design of transmission blocking malaria vaccine to demonstrate how our definition, proposed criteria and procedure can be used to identify biomarkers as predictive cluster level surrogates in the presence of interference on the clinical outcome.

SUBMITTER: Gabriel EE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7868061 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Predictive cluster level surrogacy in the presence of interference.

Gabriel Erin E EE Follmann Dean A DA

Biostatistics (Oxford, England) 20200401 2

Surrogate evaluation is a difficult problem that is made more so by the presence of interference. Our proposed procedure can allow for relatively easy evaluation of surrogates for indirect or spill-over clinical effects at the cluster level. Our definition of surrogacy is based on the causal-association paradigm (Joffe and Greene, 2009. Related causal frameworks for surrogate outcomes. Biometrics65, 530-538), under which surrogates are evaluated by the strength of the association between a causa ...[more]

PMID: 30247535

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Project description:Because of the time and expense required to obtain clinical outcomes of interest, such as functional limitations or death, clinical trials often focus the effects of treatment on earlier and more easily obtained surrogate markers. Preliminary work to define surrogates focused on the fraction of a treatment effect "explained" by a marker in a regression model, but as notions of causality have been formalized in the statistical setting, formal definitions of high-quality surrogate markers have been developed in the causal inference framework, using either the "causal effect" or "causal association" settings. In the causal effect setting, high-quality surrogate markers have a large fraction of the total treatment effect explained by the effect of the treatment on the marker net of the treatment on the outcome. In the causal association setting, high-quality surrogate markers have large treatment effects on the outcome when there are large treatment effects on the marker, and small effects on the outcome when there are small effects on the marker. A particularly important feature of a surrogate marker is that the direction of a treatment effect be the same for both the marker and the outcome. Settings in which the marker and outcome are positively associated but the marker and outcome have beneficial and harmful or harmful and beneficial treatment effects, respectively, have been referred to as "surrogate paradoxes". If this outcome always occurs, it is not problematic; however, as correlations among the outcome, marker, and their treatment effects weaken, it may occur for some trials and not for others, leading to potentially incorrect conclusions, and real-life examples that shortened thousands of lives are unfortunately available. We propose measures for assessing the risk of the surrogate paradox using the meta-analytic causal association framework, which allows us to focus on the probability that a given treatment will yield treatment effect in different directions between the marker and the outcome, and to determine the size of a beneficial effect of the treatment on the marker required to minimize the risk of a harmful effect of the treatment on the outcome. We provide simulations and consider two applications.

Dataset Information

Predictive cluster level surrogacy in the presence of interference.

Publications

Predictive cluster level surrogacy in the presence of interference.

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