title: A particular diffusion model for incomplete longitudinal data: application to the multicenter AIDS cohort study.
abstract: Longitudinal studies, in which individuals are measured repeatedly in time, are often incomplete. We model continuous-time longitudinal data from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study using a diffusion model in which the diffusion parameters are functions of the covariates. These data are jointly modeled with the process of time-to-death due to AIDS. We show that, even for large data sets with a large number of missing variables, a Bayesian analysis is feasible using Gibbs sampling and compare a complete case analysis with a Bayesian treatment of missing values.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada. castruth@uwaterloo.ca
authors.forename: Cyntha A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Struthers
authors.forename: Donald L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: McLeish
mesh_terms: D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000276:immunology*; D018791:CD4 Lymphocyte Count; D015331:Cohort Studies; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D018448:Models, Immunological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015337:Multicenter Studies as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D016019:Survival Analysis