Statistical Methods for Non-Detectible Data in Tear Cytokine Measurements

ARVO Annual Meeting, May 2012

Poster

There are many instances in which laboratory measurements have limits of detection. The results for such tests will be reported as “< d” where d represents the limit below which measurements cannot be (reliably) obtained. A number of methods can be used to handle such data when calculating numerical summary statistics. Here, we use the example of IL-6 tear cytokine levels to describe a simple, reliable method to handle such instances, and compare this method to other commonly used approaches.

This poster details:

• Description of commonly used methods for calculating summary statistics in the presence of non-detectible data
• Comparisons of and biases introduced by each statistical method
• Proposed method on how to handle non-detectible data such as tear cytokine data

Authored by:

• Heidi Goldfarb, PhD
• Dale Usner, PhD
• Kathryn Kennedy, PhD
• Dale Kennedy, PhD
• Richard Abelson, PhD