Comparing tumor rates in current and historical control groups in rodent cancer bioassays

When evaluating carcinogenicity, tumor rates from the current study are informally assessed within the context of relevant historical control tumor rates. Current rates outside the range of historical rates raise concerns. We propose a statistical procedure that formally compares tumor rates in current and historical control groups. We use a normal approximation for the null distribution of the proposed test when there are at least 5 historical control groups and the average tumor rate is above 0.5%; otherwise, we apply standard bootstrap techniques. For comparison purposes, we show that formally basing decisions on the range of historical control rates would yield unusually high false positive rates. That is, a range-based decision rule would not maintain the nominal 5% significance level and could produce Type I error rates as high as 67%. In other cases, the power could go to zero. The proposed test, however, controls Type I errors while adjusting for survival and extra variability among the historical studies. We illustrate the methods with data from a study of benzophenone. Compared to a range-based decision rule, the proposed test has several important advantages, including operating at the specified level and being applicable with as few as one historical study.