We consider the scenario where there is an exposure, multiple biologically defined sets of biomarkers, and an outcome. We propose a new two‐step procedure that tests if any of the sets of biomarkers mediate the exposure/outcome relationship, while maintaining a prespecified familywise error rate. The first step of the proposed procedure is a screening step that removes all groups that are unlikely to be strongly associated with both the exposure and the outcome. The second step adapts recent advances in postselection inference to test if there are true mediators in each of the remaining candidate sets. We use simulation to show that this simple two‐step procedure has higher statistical power to detect true mediating sets when compared with existing procedures. We then use our two‐step procedure to identify a set of Lysine‐related metabolites that potentially mediate the known relationship between increased body mass index and the increased risk of estrogen‐receptor positive breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

中文翻译：

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中介分析中的组测试。

我们考虑存在暴露、多个生物学定义的生物标志物集和结果的场景。我们提出了一种新的两步程序，该程序测试是否有任何一组生物标志物调节暴露/结果关系，同时保持预先指定的家庭错误率。拟议程序的第一步是筛选步骤，该步骤删除所有不太可能与暴露和结果密切相关的组。第二步调整选后推理的最新进展，以测试每个剩余候选集中是否存在真正的中介。我们使用模拟表明，与现有程序相比，这个简单的两步程序具有更高的统计能力来检测真正的中介集。