In your opinion, which calculation is more informative to a primary care physician in a rural...

In your opinion, which calculation is more informative to a primary care physician in a rural village—incidence rates or prevalence rates of HIV? Explain your answer and provide an example to support your response.

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Expert Solution

Before going into the conclusion, let us first see what is the incidence rate and what is the prevalence rate.

Incidence

Incidence is the rate of new (or newly diagnosed) cases of the disease. It is generally reported as the number of new cases occurring within a period of time (e.g., per month, per year). It is more meaningful when the incidence rate is reported as a fraction of the population at risk of developing the disease (e.g., per 100,000 or per million population). Obviously, the accuracy of incidence data depends upon the accuracy of diagnosis and reporting of the disease. In some cases (including ESRD) it may be more appropriate to report the rate of treatment of new cases since these are known, whereas the actual incidence of untreated cases is not.

Incidence rates can be further categorized according to different subsets of the population – e.g., by gender, by racial origin, by age group or by diagnostic category.

Prevalence

Prevalence is the actual number of cases alive, with the disease either during a period of time (period prevalence) or at a particular date in time (point prevalence). Period prevalence provides a better measure of the disease load since it includes all new cases and all deaths between two dates, whereas point prevalence only counts those alive on a particular date.

Prevalence is also most meaningfully reported as the number of cases as a fraction of the total population at risk and can be further categorized according to different subsets of the population.

Incidence to Prevalence

The relationship between incidence and prevalence depends greatly on the natural history of the disease state being reported. In the case of an influenza epidemic, the incidence may be high but not contribute too much growth of prevalence because of the high, spontaneous rate of disease resolution. In the case of a disease that has a low (or zero) cure rate, but where maintenance treatment permits sustained survival, then incidence contributes to the continuous growth of prevalence. In such cases, the limitation on prevalence growth is the mortality which occurs in the population. Obviously, prevalence will continue to grow until mortality equals or exceeds the incidence rate.

in a nutshell, we can say that Incidence is a measure of disease that allows us to determine a person's probability of being diagnosed with a disease during a given period of time. Therefore, the incidence is the number of newly diagnosed cases of a disease. An incidence rate is the number of new cases of a disease divided by the number of persons at risk for the disease. If over the course of one year, five women are diagnosed with breast cancer, out of a total female study population of 200 (who do not have breast cancer at the beginning of the study period), then we would say the incidence of breast cancer in this population was 0.025. (or 2,500 per 100,000 women-years of study)

Prevalence is a measure of disease that allows us to determine a person's likelihood of having a disease. Therefore, the number of prevalent cases is the total number of cases of a disease existing in a population. A prevalence rate is the total number of cases of a disease existing in a population divided by the total population. So, if a measurement of cancer is taken in a population of 40,000 people and 1,200 were recently diagnosed with cancer and 3,500 are living with cancer, then the prevalence of cancer is 0.118. (or 11,750 per 100,000 persons)

Now, coming to the conclusion, here the disease is HIV, which is not a new disease. And we are supposed to observe what is the number of cases which is affected by this disease, and not the number which is continuously growing. Hence, the prevalence rate is more informative rather than the incidence rate here.

Hope this answer has helped you. If you have some queries regarding this, do let me know in the comment section.

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Thanks !!

milcah answered 8 months ago

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