Thomas Scheike
Department of Biostatistics
University of Copenhagen

Title:
Estimating Haplotype Effects for Survival Data

Abstract:
We here describe how simple estimating equations can be used for Cox's regression model in the context of assessing haplotype effects for surival data. The estimating equations are simple to implement and avoids the use of the EM algorithm that in the context of the semiparametric Cox model may be slow. The estimating equations also lead to direct estimators of standard errors that are easy to compute, and thus overcome some of the difficulty with obtaining variance estimators b ased on the EM algorithm in this setting. We also develop a useful and simple to implement goodness-of-fit procedures for Cox's regression model in the context of haplotype models.  We extend the standard haplotype approach to deal with the effect of a haplotype match for patient and donor in a bone marrow transplant study. The approach is based on using a recursive structure present in the estimating equations, and this leads to a structure where the large sample properties can be studied.