Marginal Sufficient Component Cause Model

Abstract

For decades, the sufficient cause model and the counterfactual model have shaped our understanding of causation in biomedical science, and the link between these two models has enabled us to obtain a deeper understanding of causality. Recently, a new causal model-the marginal sufficient component cause model-was proposed and applied in the context of interaction or mediation. The proponents of this model have emphasized its utility in visualizing the presence of "agonism" (a subtype of mechanistic interaction) in the counterfactual framework, claiming that the concept of agonism has not been clearly defined in causal inference and that agonistic interaction cannot be visualized by the conventional sufficient cause model. In this article, we illustrate that careful scrutiny based on the conventional sufficient cause model yields further insights into the concept of agonism in a more biologic sense. We primarily focus on the following three points: a) "agonism" defined in the counterfactual model can be visualized as sets of sufficient causes in the conventional sufficient cause model; b) although the so-called independent competing assumption or no redundancy assumption may seem irrelevant in the marginal sufficient component cause model, researchers do need to assume that potential completion times of relevant marginal sufficient causes differ; c) possibly differing potential completion times of marginal sufficient causes cannot be discerned until their hidden mechanistic paths are considered in the conventional sufficient cause model. In this rapidly progressing field of research, decades after its introduction, the sufficient cause model retains its worth.

Erratum: Marginal Sufficient Component Cause Model: An Emerging Causal Model With Merits?

“…Regarding the article by Suzuki and Yamamoto in the November 2021 issue, 1 the following misprints were introduced during typesetting that were discovered after publication. In the legend of Figure 1, the third and the fourth sentences should read: “We let falseA¯ denote the complement of A in the terminology of events.…”

The Joint Effects of Depression and Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders on Suicide Deaths

“…A third potential explanation for subadditivity is “competing antagonism,” also known as “agonism.” Under the potential outcomes model, the competing antagonism mechanism arises when either exposure (such as depression and the comorbid condition) will cause disease (suicide) when the other exposure is absent, but one of the exposures cannot have an effect on the outcome once the other exposure is present because they compete to cause the outcome. 23–25 Since each exposure affects the outcome only in the absence of the other, the estimate for the exposures together is less than the sum of either exposure considered separately. Competing antagonism may explain subadditivity of the joint effects of obesity and smoking on all-cause mortality 26 and also subadditivity of the joint effects of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C viruses infection on liver cancer.…”