Likelihood-based inferences about the mean area under a longitudinal curve in the presence of observations subject to limits of detection

作者：Chandrasekhar Rameela; Shi Yi; Hutson Alan D; Wilding Gregory E^*

来源：Pharmaceutical Statistics, 2015, 14(3): 252-261.

DOI：10.1002/pst.1681

Comparison of groups in longitudinal studies is often conducted using the area under the outcome versus time curve. However, outcomes may be subject to censoring due to a limit of detection and specific methods that take informative missingness into account need to be applied. In this article, we present a unified model-based method that accounts for both the within-subject variability in the estimation of the area under the curve as well as the missingness mechanism in the event of censoring. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed method has a significant advantage over traditionally implemented methods with regards to its inferential properties. A working example from an AIDS study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of our approach.

• 出版日期2015-6