2017/04/03 by Sean Yiu, Vernon T. Farewell, Yiu, Sean +3 · 1 citation
Mathematics · Medicine · #Fuzzy Systems and Optimization #Spondyloarthritis Studies and Treatments #Osteoarthritis Treatment and Mechanisms
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1704.00522
In psoriatic arthritis, it is important to understand the joint activity\n(represented by swelling and pain) and damage processes because both are\nrelated to severe physical disability. This paper aims to provide a\ncomprehensive investigation in to both processes occurring over time, in\nparticular their relationship, by specifying a joint multi-state model at the\nindividual hand joint-level, which also accounts for many of their important\nfeatures. As there are multiple hand joints, such an analysis will be based on\nthe use of clustered multi-state models. Here we consider an observation-level\nrandom effects structure with dynamic covariates and allow for the possibility\nthat a subpopulation of patients are at minimal risk of damage. Such an\nanalysis is found to provide further understanding of the activity-damage\nrelationship beyond that provided by previous analyses. Consideration is also\ngiven to the modelling of mean sojourn times and jump probabilities. In\nparticular, a novel model parameterization which allows easily interpretable\ncovariate effects to act on these quantities is proposed.\n