Bayesian adjustment for the misclassification in both dependent and independent variables with application to a breast cancer study.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a Bayesian method to address misclassification errors in both independent and dependent variables. Our work is motivated by a study of women who have experienced new breast cancers on two separate occasions. We call both cancers primary, because the second is usually not considered as the result of a metastasis spreading from the first. Hormone receptors (HRs) are important in breast cancer biology, and it is well recognized that the measurement of HR status is subject to errors. This discordance in HR status for two primary breast cancers is of concern and might be an important reason for treatment failure. To sort out the information on true concordance rate from the observed concordance rate, we consider a logistic regression model for the association between the HR status of the two cancers and introduce the misclassification parameters (i.e., sensitivity and specificity) accounting for the misclassification in HR status. The prior distribution for sensitivity and specificity is based on how HR status is actually assessed in laboratory procedures. To account for the nonlinear effect of one error-free covariate, we introduce the B-spline terms in the logistic regression model. Our findings indicate that the true concordance rate of HR status between two primary cancers is greater than the observed value. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.