Augmented case-only designs for randomized clinical trials with failure time endpoints.
Under suitable assumptions and by exploiting the independence between inherited genetic susceptibility and treatment assignment, the case-only design yields efficient estimates for subgroup treatment effects and gene-treatment interaction in a Cox model. However it cannot provide estimates of the genetic main effect and baseline hazards, that are necessary to compute the absolute disease risk. For two-arm, placebo-controlled trials with rare failure time endpoints, we consider augmenting the case-only design with random samples of controls from both arms, as in the classical case-cohort sampling scheme, or with a random sample of controls from the active treatment arm only. The latter design is motivated by vaccine trials for cost-effective use of resources and specimens so that host genetics and vaccine-induced immune responses can be studied simultaneously in a bigger set of participants. We show that these designs can identify all parameters in a Cox model and that the efficient case-only estimator can be incorporated in a two-step plug-in procedure. Results in simulations and a data example suggest that incorporating case-only estimators in the classical case-cohort design improves the precision of all estimated parameters; sampling controls only in the active treatment arm attains a similar level of efficiency.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
James Y
JY
Dai
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Xinyi Cindy
XC
Zhang
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Ching-Yun
CY
Wang
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Charles
C
Kooperberg
D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003198:Computer Simulation; D023381:Endpoint Determination / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D012107:Research Design; D017211:Treatment Failure
Case-cohort design; Case-only estimator; Gene-treatment interaction; Nested case-control design; Pharmacogenetics