Exploring causal mechanisms and quantifying direct and indirect effects using a joint modeling approach for recurrent and terminal events.

ABSTRACT: Recurrent events are commonly encountered in biomedical studies. In many situations, there exist terminal events, such as death, which are potentially related to the recurrent events. Joint models of recurrent and terminal events have been proposed to address the correlation between recurrent events and terminal events. However, there is a dearth of suitable methods to rigorously investigate the causal mechanisms between specific exposures, recurrent events, and terminal events. For example, it is of interest to know how much of the total effect of the primary exposure of interest on the terminal event is through the recurrent events, and whether preventing recurrent event occurrences could lead to better overall survival. In this work, we propose a formal causal mediation analysis method

SUBMITTER: Niu F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11075700 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature