314Data-adaptive methods for high-dimensional mediation analysis: Application to a randomised trial of tuberculosis vaccination

Abstract

Abstract Focus of Presentation Statistical methods for causal mediation analysis are useful for understanding the pathways by which a certain treatment or exposure impacts health outcomes. Existing methods necessitate modelling of the distribution of the mediators, which quickly becomes infeasible when mediators are high-dimensional (e.g., biomarkers). We propose novel data-adaptive methods for estimating the indirect effect of a randomised treatment that acts via a pathway represented by a high-dimensional set of measurements. This work was motivated by the Melbourne Infant Study: BCG for Allergy and Infection Reduction (MIS BAIR), a randomised controlled trial investigating the effect of neonatal tuberculosis vaccination on clinical allergy and infection outcomes, and its mechanisms of action. Findings The proposed methods are doubly robust, which allows us to achieve (uniformly) valid statistical inference, even when machine learning algorithms are used for the two required models. We illustrate these in the context of the MIS BAIR study, investigating the mediating role of immune pathways represented by a high-dimensional vector of cytokine responses under various stimulants. We confirm adequate performance of the proposed methods in an extensive simulation study. Conclusions/Implications The proposed methods provide a feasible and flexible analytic strategy for examining high-dimensional mediators in randomised controlled trials. Key messages Data-adaptive methods for mediation analysis are desirable in the context of high-dimensional mediators, such as biomarkers. We propose novel doubly robust methods, which enable valid statistical inference when using machine learning algorithms for estimation.