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Why can a long latent period make a dose-response relationship difficult to detect?

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Know the investigations of researchers using genomic information to reconstruct the cause and transmission routes of the bubonic plague and the Black Death — epidemiology Researchers using genomic information to trace the transmission routes in past epidemics of plague.

In epidemiology, a long latent period—the interval between exposure to an agent and the manifestation of an outcome—can obscure a dose-response relationship because the effect may not be observable until significant time has passed.12

If researchers measure the outcome too soon after exposure, they may fail to detect any effect, even if the exposure is truly causative. This delay means that the biological response has not yet occurred or become clinically apparent, leading to an absence of data that would otherwise demonstrate the link between increasing exposure levels and the risk of the outcome. For instance, conditions such as leukemia resulting from radiation exposure can have latent periods spanning 2 to 20 years, necessitating long-term observation to accurately capture the relationship.1