CMStatistics 2018: Start Registration
View Submission - CMStatistics
B0816
Title: Discovering interactions using covariate informed random partition models Authors:  Fernando Quintana - Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (Chile) [presenting]
Garritt Page - Brigham Young University (United States)
Gary Rosner - Johns Hopkins University (United States)
Abstract: Combination chemotherapy treatment regimens created for patients diagnosed with childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia have had great success in improving cure rates. Unfortunately, patients prescribed these types of treatment regimens have displayed susceptibility to the onset of osteonecrosis. Some have suggested that this is due to pharmacokinetic interaction between two agents in the treatment regimen (asparaginase and dexamethasone) and other physiological variables. Determining which physiological variables to consider when searching for interactions in scenarios like these, minus a priori guidance, has proved to be a challenging problem, particularly if interactions influence the response distribution in ways beyond shifts in expectation or dispersion only. We propose an exploratory technique that is able to discover associations between covariates and responses in a very general way. The procedure connects covariates to responses very flexibly through dependent random partition prior distributions, and then employs machine learning techniques to highlight potential associations found in each cluster. We apply the method to data produced from a study dedicated to learning which physiological predictors influence severity of osteonecrosis multiplicatively.