Abstract:
Background: It is of considerable interest to forecast the future burden of mesothelioma mortality. Data on deaths are available, whereas no measure of asbestos exposure is available.
Methods: We compare two Poisson models: a response-only model with an age-cohort specification and a multinomial model with epidemiologically motivated frequencies.
Results: The response-only model has 5% higher peak mortality than the dose-response model. The former performs slightly better in out-of-sample comparison.
Conclusion: Mortality is predicted to peak at about 2100 deaths around 2017 among males in cohorts until 1966 and below 90 years of age. The response-only model is a simple benchmark that forecasts just as well as more complicated models.
Citation:
Martinez-Miranda, M. D., Nielsen, B. and Nielsen, J. P. (2016). 'A simple benchmark for mesothelioma projection for Great Britain'. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 73, 561-563.