Modeling Joint Health Effects of Environmental Exposure Mixtures with Bayesian Additive Regression Trees

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Englert, Jacob, Ebelt, Stefanie, Chang, Howard
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Englert, Jacob
Ebelt, Stefanie
Chang, Howard
author_facet Englert, Jacob
Ebelt, Stefanie
Chang, Howard
contents Studying the association between mixtures of environmental exposures and health outcomes can be challenging due to issues such as correlation among the exposures and non-linearities or interactions in the exposure-response function. For this reason, one common strategy is to fit flexible nonparametric models to capture the true exposure-response surface. However, once such a model is fit, further decisions are required when it comes to summarizing the marginal and joint effects of the mixture on the outcome. In this work, we describe the use of soft Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) to estimate the exposure-risk surface describing the effect of mixtures of chemical air pollutants and temperature on asthma-related emergency department (ED) visits during the warm season in Atlanta, Georgia from 2011-2018. BART is chosen for its ability to handle large datasets and for its flexibility to be incorporated as a single component of a larger model. We then summarize the results using a strategy known as accumulated local effects to extract meaningful insights into the mixture effects on asthma-related morbidity. Notably, we observe negative associations between nitrogen dioxide and asthma ED visits and harmful associations between ozone and asthma ED visits, both of which are particularly strong on lower temperature days.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_09025
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Modeling Joint Health Effects of Environmental Exposure Mixtures with Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
Englert, Jacob
Ebelt, Stefanie
Chang, Howard
Applications
Studying the association between mixtures of environmental exposures and health outcomes can be challenging due to issues such as correlation among the exposures and non-linearities or interactions in the exposure-response function. For this reason, one common strategy is to fit flexible nonparametric models to capture the true exposure-response surface. However, once such a model is fit, further decisions are required when it comes to summarizing the marginal and joint effects of the mixture on the outcome. In this work, we describe the use of soft Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) to estimate the exposure-risk surface describing the effect of mixtures of chemical air pollutants and temperature on asthma-related emergency department (ED) visits during the warm season in Atlanta, Georgia from 2011-2018. BART is chosen for its ability to handle large datasets and for its flexibility to be incorporated as a single component of a larger model. We then summarize the results using a strategy known as accumulated local effects to extract meaningful insights into the mixture effects on asthma-related morbidity. Notably, we observe negative associations between nitrogen dioxide and asthma ED visits and harmful associations between ozone and asthma ED visits, both of which are particularly strong on lower temperature days.
title Modeling Joint Health Effects of Environmental Exposure Mixtures with Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
topic Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09025