npcure: An R Package for Nonparametric Inference in Mixture Cure Models

Authors

Ana López-Cheda
M Amalia Jácome
Ignacio López-de-Ullibarri

Date of this Version

6-2021

Document Type

Article

Citation

The R Journal (June 2021) 13(1); Editor: Dianne Cook

Comments

Copyright 2021, The R Foundation. Open access material. License: CC BY 4.0 International

Abstract

Mixture cure models have been widely used to analyze survival data with a cure fraction. They assume that a subgroup of the individuals under study will never experience the event (cured subjects). So, the goal is twofold: to study both the cure probability and the failure time of the uncured individuals through a proper survival function (latency). The R package npcure implements a completely nonparametric approach for estimating these functions in mixture cure models, considering right-censored survival times. Nonparametric estimators for the cure probability and the latency as functions of a covariate are provided. Bootstrap bandwidth selectors for the estimators are included. The package also implements a nonparametric covariate significance test for the cure probability, which can be applied with a continuous, discrete, or qualitative covariate.