title: On the use of biomarkers for environmental health research.
abstract: This article discusses the growing interest in the use of biomarker data in environmental health research and considers some of the challenging statistical issues that arise. We specify a modeling framework that links environmental exposure, biomarkers and outcome, and discuss in conceptual terms how such a formulation could be used to inform dose response modeling for the purpose of quantitative risk assessment. We then analyse some biomarker data from a case-control study designed to elucidate the mechanisms of smoking induced lung cancer. Because of sample size limitations, we use a likelihood-based analysis which subsumes both cohort and case-control designs as special cases. Our analysis allows us to 1) investigate the extent to which the markers explain the pathway from exposure to outcome; 2) quantify the degree to which biomarker data can improve on predicting outcome over and above exposure; and 3) estimate the association among multiple markers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA. lryan@hsph.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Louise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ryan
authors.forename: Wenzheng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Sally W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Thurston
authors.forename: Karl T
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Kelsey
authors.forename: John K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Wiencke
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Christiani
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D062665:Epidemiological Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology; D015233:Models, Statistical; D012107:Research Design; D018570:Risk Assessment
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers