Course of a disease

The ability of a drug to produce beneficial effects on the duration or course of a disease. 

Like Indiana Jones, virtually every manufacturer of a superfruit product is hot on the trail of the Holy Grail—a health claim approved by a national regulatory agency such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). In simple terms, a health claim would verify that the product or compound has been scientifically proved to have a direct effect on health or the specific ability to alter the course of a disease. 

There is a need to increase treatment effectiveness, which is not ordinarily considered an advantage of self-medication. Increase in effectiveness depends on the generally more rapid availability of OTC medications compared to prescription medications, so that treatment may begin sooner. This can significantly shorten the total length of suffering, especially when the natural course of a disease is brief or when severe discomfort makes prompt therapy especially helpful. 

A series of probable transitions between states can be described with Markov modeling. The natural course of a disease, for example, can be viewed for an individual subject as a sequence of certain states of health (12). A Markovian stochastic process is memoryless. To predict what the future state will be, knowledge of the current state is sufficient and is independent of where the process has been in the past. This is termed the strong Markov property (13). 

Describe the process of affinity maturation and how it can lead to a 1000-fold increase in binding affinity during the course of a disease. 

Figure 73.1 illustrates various points at which measurements are made over the course of a disease or injury, as well as some of the purposes for which they are made. The majority of measurements made in rehabilitation are aimed at characterizing the human system. 

FIGURE 73.1 Measurements of structure, performance, and behavior serve many different purposes at different points over the course of a disease or injury that results in the need for rehabilitation services. 

The quality gap has been nicely expressed by Donabedian in a simple diagram, which depicts the course of an untreated or partially treated disease, against the course of a disease when the patient receives correct and timely treatment. I have added an additional curve to depict a situation in which the patient is actually made worse by their treatment, essentially to underline... 

Reportable occurrences in the voluntary system should include any adverse event and any near miss, excluding events related to the natural course of a disease. Criminal activity, gross negligence, and professional misconduct should not be reported to a voluntary system. 

Verlauf z.B. einer Krankheit) course (of a disease), progress, development, trend ... 

An interval in the course of a disease in which the symptoms subside or abate. 

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