Natural history study

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In

medical condition
or disease. A natural history study collects health information over time to understand how the medical condition or disease develops and to give insight into how it might be treated.

A natural history study is often submitted when applying to the

FDA
or other regulatory agency as a baseline, to show the disease course for untreated patients. The natural history data is compared to the disease course of patients given a proposed therapy to show the effects of the therapy.

References

Public Domain This article incorporates

U.S. National Cancer Institute
.