A Semiparametric Bayesian Approach for Analyzing Longitudinal Data from Multiple Related Groups

Often the biological and/or clinical experiments result in longitudinal data from multiple related groups. The analysis of such data is quite challenging due to the fact that groups might have shared information on the mean and/or covariance functions. In this article, we consider a Bayesian semiparametric approach of modeling the mean trajectories for longitudinal response coming from multiple related groups. We consider matrix stick-breaking process priors on the group mean parameters which allows information sharing on the mean trajectories across the groups. Simulation studies are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared to the more traditional approaches. We analyze data from a one-year follow-up of nutrition education for hypercholesterolemic children with three different treatments where the children are from different age-groups. Our analysis provides more clinically useful information than the previous analysis of the same dataset. The proposed approach will be a very powerful tool for analyzing data from clinical trials and other medical experiments.