Adjusting a subject-specific time of event in longitudinal studies.

Overview

Biomedical studies often involve an event that occurs to individuals at different times and has a significant influence on individual trajectories of response variables over time. We propose a statistical model to capture the mean trajectory alteration caused by not only the occurrence of the event but also the subject-specific time of the event. The proposed model provides a post-event mean trajectory smoothly connected with the pre-event mean trajectory by allowing the model parameters associated with the post-event mean trajectory to vary over time of the event. A goodness-of-fit test is considered to investigate how well the proposed model is fit to the data. Hypothesis tests are also developed to assess the influence of the subject-specific time of event on the mean trajectory. Theoretical and simulation studies confirm that the proposed tests choose the correctly specified model consistently and examine the effect of the subject-specific time of event successfully. The proposed model and tests are also illustrated by the analysis of two real-life data from a biomarker study for HIV patients along with their own time of treatment initiation and a body fatness study in girls with different age of menarche.