A new approach for joint modelling of longitudinal measurements and survival times with a cure fraction

The joint analysis of longitudinal measurements and survival data is useful in clinical trials and other medical studies. In this paper, we consider a joint model which assumes a linear mixed tt model for longitudinal measurements and a promotion time cure model for survival data and links these two models through a latent variable. A semiparametric inference procedure with an EM algorithm implementation is developed for the parameters in the joint model. The proposed procedure is evaluated in a simulation study and applied to analyze the quality of life and time to recurrence data from a clinical trial on women with early breast cancer. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 40: 207224; 2012 (c) 2012 Statistical Society of Canada