Flexible assessment of trends in age-specific HIV incidence using two-dimensional penalized likelihood

Ian C. Marschner*, Ronald J. Bosch

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We present a method for estimating age- and time-specific HIV incidence using back-calculation of AIDS incidence data. Two-dimensional penalized likelihood is employed, using a flexible bivariate step function model of HIV incidence, together with a quadratic roughness penalty which leads to thin-plate spline smoothing. This allows incidence estimates to vary flexibly and smoothly in both age and time. We propose generalized cross-validation as a guide for choice of an appropriate level of smoothing and describe an EM algorithm for computing the estimates. We propose the method primarily for qualitative assessment of trends in age-specific incidence over time and apply it to a small Italian data set on men who have sex with men. The analysis suggests a trend over time of increasing relative incidence among younger individuals, consistent with incidence patterns observed in other countries.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1017-1031
Number of pages15
JournalStatistics in Medicine
Volume17
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 May 1998
Externally publishedYes

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