title: Generalized pairwise comparisons of prioritized outcomes in the two-sample problem.
abstract: This paper extends the idea behind the U-statistic of the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test to perform generalized pairwise comparisons between two groups of observations. The observations are outcomes captured by a single variable, possibly repeatedly measured, or by several variables of any type (e.g. discrete, continuous, time to event). When several outcomes are considered, they must be prioritized. We show that generalized pairwise comparisons extend well-known non-parametric tests, and illustrate their interest using data from two randomized clinical trials. We also show that they lead to a general measure of the difference between the groups called the 'proportion in favor of treatment', denoted Δ, which is related to traditional measures of treatment effect for a single variable.
authors.affiliation: International Drug Development Institute, 30 avenue provinciale, 1340 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. marc.buyse@iddi.com
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Buyse
mesh_terms: D000971:Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols / Q000627:therapeutic use; D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide / Q000627:therapeutic use; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D005472:Fluorouracil / Q000627:therapeutic use; D006801:Humans; D002955:Leucovorin / Q000627:therapeutic use; D008268:Macular Degeneration / Q000188:drug therapy; D009944:Organoplatinum Compounds / Q000627:therapeutic use; D000077150:Oxaliplatin; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014792:Visual Acuity / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide; D009944:Organoplatinum Compounds; D000077150:Oxaliplatin; C495058:pegaptanib; D002955:Leucovorin; D005472:Fluorouracil