Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The earliest identified occurrence of a disease or disorder, usually as part of an epidemiological investigation of a patient population or a genetic study of a family.
- noun The first patient who has such a disease or disorder.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the earliest documented case of a disease that is included in an epidemiological study
Etymologies
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Examples
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chained_bear commented on the word index case
"All the evidence that he had compiled pointed to the existence of an index case that would confirm, once and for all, the very theory that he had so long resisted."
—Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map (New York: Penguin, 2006), 177
October 3, 2008