Nested Case Control Study
A case-control study design in which cases and controls are from the subjects in an ongoing cohort study. These studies are hybrids of retrospective and prospective analyses because they start by identifying a population, then collect baseline data and follow the population for the next several years.
The objective is to compare the histories (and sometimes contemporaneous clinical measurements) of individuals who develop the disease with those who do not develop the disease during the study period. Nested case-control studies are an efficient method for studying case-control relationships among a cohort once a number of cases have emerged.
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