Causal effect on the number of life years lost due to a specific event: average treatment effect and variable importance
Simon Christoffer Ziersen, Torben Martinussen · 2026
Read Causal effect on the number of life years lost due to a specific event: average treatment effect and variable importance by Simon Christoffer Ziersen, Torben Martinussen (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13427853.txt.
Description
Ziersen and Martinussen published a 2026 methods paper on counting life years lost to one cause. When several risks compete, plain death rates can blur what one cause costs. Their measure asks how many years a given event steals on average. They set rules for when that causal cost can be read from data.
The paper builds estimators that pair flexible machine learning with sound math. Test runs showed the estimators behave as theory predicts under set conditions. They also rank which patient traits change the cost most strongly. The team applied the method to Danish records on antidepressant response. Registry data on switching drugs or hospital return supplied the test case. Simulations backed the method before the registry test case ran.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Simon Christoffer Ziersen, Torben Martinussen |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 62 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |