A meta-regression method for studying etiological heterogeneity across disease subtypes classified by multiple biomarkers

Abstract

In interdisciplinary biomedical, epidemiologic, and population research, it is increasingly necessary to consider pathogenesis and inherent heterogeneity of any given health condition and outcome. As the unique disease principle implies, no single biomarker can perfectly define disease subtypes. The complex nature of molecular pathology and biology necessitates biostatistical methodologies to simultaneously analyze multiple biomarkers and subtypes. To analyze and test for heterogeneity hypotheses across subtypes defined by multiple categorical and/or ordinal markers, we developed a meta-regression method that can utilize existing statistical software for mixed-model analysis. This method can be used to assess whether the exposure-subtype associations are different across subtypes defined by 1 marker while controlling for other markers and to evaluate whether the difference in exposure-subtype association across subtypes defined by 1 marker depends on any other markers. To illustrate this method in molecular pathological epidemiology research, we examined the associations between smoking status and colorectal cancer subtypes defined by 3 correlated tumor molecular characteristics (CpG island methylator phenotype, microsatellite instability, and the B-Raf protooncogene, serine/threonine kinase (BRAF), mutation) in the Nurses' Health Study (1980-2010) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2010). This method can be widely useful as molecular diagnostics and genomic technologies become routine in clinical medicine and public health.