 Because the criterion for solving the LCA is to achieve latent classes within which there is no longer any association of one symptom with another (because the class is the disease which causes their association), and the set of diseases a patient has (or class a case is a member of) causes the symptom association, the symptoms will be "conditionally independent", i.e., conditional on class membership, they are no longer related.Within each latent class, the observed variables are statistically independent.This is an important aspect.