title: Mark-specific additive hazards regression with continuous marks.
abstract: For survival data, mark variables are only observed at uncensored failure times, and it is of interest to investigate whether there is any relationship between the failure time and the mark variable. The additive hazards model, focusing on hazard differences rather than hazard ratios, has been widely used in practice. In this article, we propose a mark-specific additive hazards model in which both the regression coefficient functions and the baseline hazard function depend nonparametrically on a continuous mark. An estimating equation approach is developed to estimate the regression functions, and the asymptotic properties of the resulting estimators are established. In addition, some formal hypothesis tests are constructed for various hypotheses concerning the mark-specific treatment effects. The finite sample behavior of the proposed estimators is evaluated through simulation studies, and an application to a data set from the first HIV vaccine efficacy trial is provided.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
authors.forename: Dongxiao
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China. slq@amt.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Liuquan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, 28223, USA.
authors.forename: Yanqing
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Biostatistics and Programming, Sanofi, Bridgewater, NJ, 08807, USA.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qi
mesh_terms: D016915:AIDS Vaccines; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D006801:Humans; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012044:Regression Analysis
chemical_list: D016915:AIDS Vaccines
keywords: Additive hazards model; Competing risks; Confidence bands and tests; Continuous mark; HIV vaccine trial; Mark-specific vaccine effects; Survival data