A literature-based approach to evaluate the predictive capacity of a marker using time-dependent summary receiver operating characteristics

• Published in: Statistical methods in medical research Vol. 25; no. 2; p. 674
• Main Authors: Combescure, C, Daures, J P, Foucher, Y
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 01.04.2016
• Subjects: Biomarkers - analysis; Biomarkers, Tumor - analysis; Breast Neoplasms - diagnosis; Breast Neoplasms - metabolism; Breast Neoplasms - pathology; Humans; Ki-67 Antigen - analysis; Kidney Transplantation; Meta-Analysis as Topic; Prognosis; ROC Curve; Survival Analysis; time-dependent ROC curve; prognostic marker; Meta-analyses
• ISSN: 1477-0334
• DOI: 10.1177/0962280212464542

SummaryMeta-analyses are popular tools to summarize the results of publications. Prognostic performances of a marker are usually summarized by meta-analyses of survival curves or hazard ratios. These approaches may detect a difference in survival according to the marker but do not allow evaluation of its prognostic capacity. Time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curves evaluate the ability of a marker to predict time-to-event. In this article, we describe an adaptation of time-dependent summary receiver operating characteristic curves from published survival curves. To achieve this goal, we modeled the marker and the time-to-event distributions using non-linear mixed models. First, we applied this methodology to individual data in kidney transplantation presented as aggregated data, in order to validate the method. Second, we re-analyzed a published meta-analysis, which focused on the capacity of KI-67 to predict the overall survival of patients with breast cancer.