In medicine, the window period for a test designed to detect a specific disease (particularly infectious disease) is the time between first infection and when the test can reliably detect that infection. In antibody-based testing, the window period is dependent on the time taken for seroconversion.
The window period is important to epidemiology and safe sex strategies, and in blood and organ donation, because during this time, an infected person or animal cannot be detected as infected but may still be able to infect others. For this reason, the most effective disease-prevention strategies combine testing with a waiting period longer than the test's window period.
Famous quotes containing the words window and/or period:
“Then is what you see through this window onto the world so lovely that you have no desire whatsoever to look out through any other window?—and that you even make an attempt to prevent others from doing so?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavour to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)