Bayesian borrowing from historical control data in a vaccine efficacy trial

Abstract In the context of vaccine efficacy trial where the incidence rate is very low and a very large sample size is usually expected, incorporating historical data into a new trial is extremely attractive to reduce sample size and increase estimation precision. Nevertheless, for some infectious diseases, seasonal change in incidence rates poses a huge challenge in borrowing historical data and a critical question is how to properly take advantage of historical data borrowing with acceptable tolerance to between‐trials heterogeneity commonly from seasonal disease transmission. In this article, we extend a probability‐based power prior which determines the amount of information to be borrowed based on the agreement between the historical and current data, to make it applicable for either a single or multiple historical trials available, with constraint on the amount of historical information to be borrowed. Simulations are conducted to compare the performance of the proposed method with other methods including modified power prior (MPP), meta‐analytic‐predictive (MAP) prior and the commensurate prior methods. Furthermore, we illustrate the application of the proposed method for trial design in a practical setting.