By Matthew Schmitz, M.D., About.com
Updated: February 16, 2009
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board
A measure of the total number of people in a population who have a certain disease at a given time. This is a common measure used when describing how widespread or common a given disease is.
For instance, if a population of 100 people is studied and 15 of them have prostate cancer at a given time, then the prevalence of prostate cancer in that population is 15%.
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