A Note on formulae for causal mediation analysis in an odds ratiocontext.

In a recent manuscript, VanderWeele and Vansteelandt (American Journal of Epidemiology, 2010,172:1339-1348) (hereafter VWV) build on results due to Judea Pearl on causal mediation analysis and derive simple closed-form expressions for so-called natural direct and indirect effects in an odds ratio context for a binary outcome and a continuous mediator. The expressions obtained by VWV make two key simplifying assumptions: The mediator is normally distributed with constant variance,The binary outcome is rare. Assumption A may not be appropriate in settings where, as can happen in routine epidemiologic applications, the distribution of the mediator variable is highly skew. However, in this note, the author establishes that under a key assumption of "no mediator-exposure interaction" in the logistic regression model for the outcome, the simple formulae of VWV continue to hold even when the normality assumption of the mediator is dropped. The author further shows that when the "no interaction" assumption is relaxed, the formula of VWV for the natural indirect effect in this setting continues to apply when assumption A is also dropped. However, an alternative formula to that of VWV for the natural direct effect is required in this context and is provided in an appendix. When the disease is not rare, the author replaces assumptions A and B with an assumption C that the mediator follows a so-called Bridge distribution in which case simple closed-form formulae are again obtained for the natural direct and indirect effects.