EPIDEMIOLOGY: An apparently new illness has appeared in the Northern United Stat
ID: 67450 • Letter: E
Question
EPIDEMIOLOGY:
An apparently new illness has appeared in the Northern United States. Approximately 86 people have been identified with similar symptoms, and many more people are suspected of having the same illness. The physicians are mystified and call on you as an expert in infectious disease epidemiology. The illness is suspected of being contagious because it appears in people who were previously healthy, a fever is associated with the illness, and families sometimes have more than one case during a similar time period.
What kind of study (randomized, case-control, cross-sectional, cohort) would you do to try to identify the cause of the illness, and why?
Explanation / Answer
Cross sectional study, because it provide data on the entire population under study, whereas other studies generally include only person with a specific characteristic, with a sample, often a tiny minority, of the rest of the population where as cross-sectional studies are descriptive studies Unlike case-control studies, they can be used to describe, not only the odds ratio, but also absolute risks and relative risks from prevalences. It can also be used to describe some feature of the population, such as prevalence of an illness, and it can also provide inferences of cause and effect.
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