1. A conceptual model of disease spectrum is used to review issues in the design of a trial to prevent chronic diseases. 2. The model contrasts the ideal prevention with the feasibility of clinical trials and addresses the issues regarding safety of intervention, study duration, sample size, endpoint and population definitions in an orderly layout. The paper also highlights the importance of using data of the natural history of diseases in the design of a prevention trial. 3. Special attention is paid to primary prevention and some difficulties associated with its strategies. 4. Diabetic retinopathy is used as an example for illustrating the points made throughout the paper.
|Original language||English (US)|
|Number of pages||10|
|State||Published - 1991|
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes