Baseline (spontaneous) symptoms in healthy persons--a prospective study.
Many healthy people have unexplainable complaints. Healthy subjects who had not suffered from any disease in the previous two months and who were not taking any drugs during the previous two weeks were interrogated daily for seven days to determine whether they experienced any abnormal feeling (baseline or spontaneous symptoms). Of 398 subjects interrogated, 49 (12.5 per cent) gave a history of having suffered from one or more symptoms. Incidence of baseline symptoms was higher in the medical group compared with the nonmedical group and in females compared with males. In the study of adverse drug reaction, controls for spontaneous symptoms in the population under surveillance are essential.