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Abstract:
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In case-control studies of gene-environment association with disease, when genetic and environmental exposures can be assumed to be independent in the underlying population, one may exploit the independence in order to derive more efficient estimation techniques than the traditional logistic regression analysis (Chatterjee and Carroll, Biometrika, 2005). However, covariates that stratify the population, such as age, ethnicity and alike, could potentially lead to sources of non-independence. We provide a novel semiparametric Bayesian approach to model stratification effects under the assumption of gene-environment independence in the control population. The results reflect that the semiparametric Bayesian model allows incorporation of key scientific evidence in the form of a prior and offers a flexible, robust alternative when standard parametric model assumptions do not hold.
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