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Abstract:
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In genetic family studies, ages at onset of diseases are routinely collected. Often one is interested in assessing the familial association of ages at onset of a certain disease type. However, when the competing risk is present and related to the disease of interest, the usual measure of association by treating the competing event as an independent censoring event is biased. We propose a bivariate model that incorporates two types of association: one is between the first event times of paired members, and the other is between the failure types. We consider flexible measures for both types of association, and propose an estimate procedure for these measures. The proposed method is illustrated using the kinship data from the Washington Ashkenazi Study.
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