1996 Articles

A Functional Decline Model for Prevalent Cohort Data

Liu, Xinhua; Tsai, Wei-Yann; Stern, Yaakov

Longitudinal designs are often used for studying the natural history of diseases. Data sets typically consist of short series of repeated measures on prevalent cases. We propose a growth model approach to the analysis of follow-up data to describe functional decline and associated risk factors in disease progression. We illustrate the model with an application to longitudinal data that describe the time-evolution of cognitive decline in a cohort of patients with Alzheimer's disease.