Machine-learning models predicting osteoarthritis associated with the lead blood level

Lead is one of the most hazardous environmental pollutants in industrialized countries; lead exposure is a risk factor for osteoarthritis (OA) in older women. Here, the performance of several machine-learning (ML) algorithms in terms of predicting the prevalence of OA associated with lead exposure was compared. A total of 2224 women aged 50 years and older who participated in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 2005 to 2017 were divided into a training dataset (70%) for generation of ML models, and a test dataset (30%). We built and tested five ML algorithms, including logistic regression (LR), a k-nearest neighbor model, a decision tree, a random forest, and a support vector machine. All afforded acceptable predictive accuracy; the LR model was the most accurate and yielded the greatest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. We found that various ML models can be used to predict the risk of OA associated with lead exposure effectively, using data from population-based survey.