Question

A cause of disease is an event, condition, or characteristic that preceded the disease and without which the disease would either not have occurred or would have occurred later.

Answer 1

Answer: true

The cause of a disease is also called etiology.  The cause must happen before the disease develop. Without the cause, the disease shouldn't appear too.
This makes the research to determine a cause of disease have to take the examination in multiple times. A research that takes one time data like cross-sectional won't show causation.