Marginal structural models to estimate the causal effect of zidovudine on the survival of HIV-positive men

Standard methods for survival analysis, such as the time-dependent Cox mode l, may produce biased effect estimates when there exist time dependent conf ounders that are themselves affected by previous treatment or exposure. Mar ginal structural models are a new class of causal models the parameters of which are estimated through inverse probability-of-treatment weighting; the se models allow fur appropriate adjustment for confounding. We describe the marginal structural Cox proportional hazards model and use it to estimate the causal effect: of zidovudine on the survival of human immunodeficiency virus-positive men participating in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study. In t his study, CD4 lymphocyte count is both a time-dependent confounder of the causal effect of zidovudine on survival and is affected by past zidovudine treatment. The crude mortality rate ratio (95% confidence interval) for zid ovudine was 3.6 (3.0-4.3), which reflects the presence of confounding. Afte r controlling for baseline CD4 count and other baseline covariates using st andard methods, the mortality rate ratio decreased to 2.3 (1.9-2.8). Using a marginal structural Cox model to control further for time-dependent confo unding due to CD4 count and other time-dependent covariates, the mortality rate ratio was 0.7 (95% conservative confidence interval = 0.6-1.0). We com pare marginal structural models with previously proposed causal methods.