IS COMPARISON OF THE PREVALENCE OF DISEASE APPROPRIATE
AS HEALTH INDICATOR BETWEEN TWO POPULATIONS?
comparing the number of people found to have
the condition within the total number of people
studied, and is usually expressed as a fraction, as a
percentage or as the number of cases per 10,000
or 100,000 people.
Point prevalence is the proportion of a population
that has the condition at a specific point in time.
Period prevalence is the proportion of a population
that has the condition at some time during a given
period, and includes people who already have the
condition at the beginning of the study period as
well as those who acquire it during that period.
Lifetime prevalence (LTP) is the proportion of a
population that at some point in their life (up to
the time of assessment) have experienced the
condition (2), or simply, the prevalence of a disease
is the proportion of people with a given disease at
a given time.
Prevalence is conventionally expressed as the
proportion or percentage of cases in a given
population at