Journal
JOURNALS OF GERONTOLOGY SERIES A-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICAL SCIENCES
Volume 66, Issue 1, Pages 109-114Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glq188
Keywords
Informative censoring; Joint analysis; Longitudinal study; Healthy survivor effect; Functional disability
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Funding
- National Institute on Aging [R01 AG031850-01A1, R37AG17560, K24AG021507]
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING [K24AG021507, R37AG017560, R01AG031850, P30AG021342] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
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Background. Longitudinal studies in gerontology are characterized by termination of measurement from death. Death is related to many important gerontological outcomes, such as functional disability, and may, over time, change the composition of an older study population. For these reasons, treating death as noninformative censoring of a longitudinal outcome may result in biased estimates of regression coefficients related to that outcome. Methods. In a longitudinal study of community-living older persons, we analytically and graphically illustrate the dependence between death and functional disability. Relative to survivors, decedents display a rapid decline of functional ability in the months preceding death. Death's strong relationship with functional disability demonstrates that death is not independent of this outcome and, hence, leads to informative censoring. We also demonstrate the healthy survivor effect that results from death's selection effect, with respect to functional disability, on the longitudinal makeup of an older study population. Results. We briefly survey commonly used approaches for longitudinal modeling of gerontological outcomes, with special emphasis on their treatment of death. Most common methods treat death as noninformative censoring. However, joint modeling methods are described that take into account any dependency between death and a longitudinal outcome. Conclusions. In longitudinal studies of older persons, death is often related to gerontological outcomes and, therefore, cannot be safely assumed to represent noninformative censoring. Such analyzes must account for the dependence between outcomes and death as well as the changing nature of the cohort.
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