Regression for Left-Truncated and Right-Censored Data: A Semiparametric Sieve Likelihood Approach

Cohort studies of the onset of a disease often encounter left-truncation on the event time of interest in addition to right-censoring due to variable enrollment times of study participants. Analysis of such event time data can be biased if left-truncation is not handled properly. We propose a semiparametric sieve likelihood approach for fitting a linear regression model to data where the response variable is subject to both left-truncation and right-censoring. We show that the estimators of regression coefficients are consistent, asymptotically normal and semiparametrically efficient. Extensive simulation studies show the effectiveness of the method across a wide variety of error distributions. We further illustrate the method by analyzing datasets from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging and The 90+ Study for aging and dementia.