[R] A model for disease progression

[Luke Whitaker]

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Damon Wischik wrote:
> 
> As I described before, I have a snapshot of a population taken at a
> certain time. I am interested in an age-related disease, which progresses
> healthy->A->B. (There is no recovery.) For each individual, I know their
> age (in years) and the stage of the disease. There are roughly 800 cases,
> with ages spanning 40 years.
> 

I haven't followed this thread so I don't know if it has already been
mentioned, but if all you have is a snapshot, then any inference you
make on disease progression will have to be based on the assumption
that both the disease and the population demographics are in steady
state. I would think that in many real world disease/population
cases this will be a very poor assumption. I'm afraid I can't see
any obvious way around this other than to look for some sort of
cohort/followup data.

Regards,

Luke Whitaker.