Modeling Peak Expiratory Flow in Patients With Asthma and Quantifying Treatment Effects Using a Mixed‐Effects Hidden Markov Model

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Abstract
Clinical trials in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease often use exacerbation risk as the primary endpoint. However, exacerbations occur with low frequency, leading to long and costly clinical trials. Home‐measured spirometry, which is becoming more common, provides an alternative and has previously been used to shorten the necessary trial duration. In this work, we develop a mixed‐effects hidden Markov model (MEHMM) for analyzing home‐measured peak expiratory flow (PEF), combining an observation model with a latent two‐state disease process representing sustained periods of high and low PEF, respectively. An inference framework is implemented to estimate fixed and random effects together with measures of uncertainty. Data from a phase 2b dose‐finding study of velsecorat in asthma are used to investigate dose–response relationships, complemented by an extensive simulation study. The results demonstrate reliable estimation of parameters and identify statistically significant treatment effects on multiple model components. These findings support the use of latent disease‐state models for extracting meaningful information from home‐measured spirometry.

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