Hygiene, preventive medicine and epidemiology are modern disciplines which react to the current state of health of the population. They actively establish the risk factors of diseases and look for effective ways to eliminate them through primary prevention and, in cases where the disease has already occurred, they seek out optimal approaches to prevent complications through secondary prevention.

They make use of biomarkers in the active establishment of risk factors, diagnostics, and the monitoring of the course of disease. Biomarkers are a basic requirement for successful primary and secondary prevention.