Clinical Research Glossary

prevalence prevalence

CDISC

Number of known cases or events in a group.

Example of prevalence in a sentence

The prevalence tells us how many people in a population have a specific disease or condition.

More Info

Measuring the prevalence of a health issue is a way to understand how many people are affected in a given time period. It measures how common the condition or disease is, regardless of when the person developed the condition or disease.

For example, in 2021, the prevalence of diabetes in the US was 11.6% of the population, and 14.7% of all adults (i.e., people aged 18 and older).

Other info to think about when joining a study

The term “prevalence” is used to describe how many people are known to have a particular disease or condition.

You may want to ask the study team what the prevalence of adverse events in past studies was.

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