Cohort
In the medical sense, a cohort is a group of patients with comparable symptoms or other similarities, which is observed over a certain period of time. The transplant cohort, a project within DZIF, provides data and biospecimen from transplant patients for studies.
Detailed description
Explicit consent has to be given by the patients to be included in the cohort. During the observation period, patient information is gathered and biological samples are collected. In contrary to clinical studies, there is no intervention or treatment nor a control group. A cohort allows drawing conclusions on biological or medical relationships. With the help of the DZIF transplant cohort, medical data and biological samples from transplanted patients are collected and managed throughout Germany. They can be used for scientific studies in order to improve human live after transplantation in the long term.