Borrowing Strength Across Exposures and Outcomes via Index Models for Multi-pollutant Mixtures

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: McGee, Glen, Antonelli, Joseph
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866914219425792000
author McGee, Glen
Antonelli, Joseph
author_facet McGee, Glen
Antonelli, Joseph
contents An important goal of environmental health research is to assess the health risks posed by mixtures of multiple environmental exposures. In these mixtures analyses, flexible models like Bayesian kernel machine regression and multiple index models are appealing because they allow for arbitrary non-linear exposure-outcome relationships. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of low power, particularly when exposures are highly correlated and the health effects are weak, as is typical in environmental health studies. We propose a multivariate index modelling strategy that borrows strength across exposures and outcomes by exploiting similar mixture component weights and exposure-response relationships. In the special case of distributed lag models, in which exposures are measured repeatedly over time, we jointly encourage co-clustering of lag profiles and exposure-response curves to more efficiently identify critical windows of vulnerability and characterize important exposure effects. We then extend the proposed approach to the multiple index model setting where the true index structure -- the number of indices and their composition -- is unknown, and introduce variable importance measures to quantify component contributions to mixture effects. Using time series data from the National Morbidity, Mortality and Air Pollution Study, we demonstrate the proposed methods by jointly modelling three mortality outcomes and two cumulative air pollution measurements with a maximum lag of 14 days.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_17195
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Borrowing Strength Across Exposures and Outcomes via Index Models for Multi-pollutant Mixtures
McGee, Glen
Antonelli, Joseph
Methodology
An important goal of environmental health research is to assess the health risks posed by mixtures of multiple environmental exposures. In these mixtures analyses, flexible models like Bayesian kernel machine regression and multiple index models are appealing because they allow for arbitrary non-linear exposure-outcome relationships. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of low power, particularly when exposures are highly correlated and the health effects are weak, as is typical in environmental health studies. We propose a multivariate index modelling strategy that borrows strength across exposures and outcomes by exploiting similar mixture component weights and exposure-response relationships. In the special case of distributed lag models, in which exposures are measured repeatedly over time, we jointly encourage co-clustering of lag profiles and exposure-response curves to more efficiently identify critical windows of vulnerability and characterize important exposure effects. We then extend the proposed approach to the multiple index model setting where the true index structure -- the number of indices and their composition -- is unknown, and introduce variable importance measures to quantify component contributions to mixture effects. Using time series data from the National Morbidity, Mortality and Air Pollution Study, we demonstrate the proposed methods by jointly modelling three mortality outcomes and two cumulative air pollution measurements with a maximum lag of 14 days.
title Borrowing Strength Across Exposures and Outcomes via Index Models for Multi-pollutant Mixtures
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17195