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Molecular Epidemiology
Molecular epidemiology is a branch of epidemiology and medical science that focuses on the contribution of potential genetic and environmental risk factors, identified at the molecular level, to the etiology, distribution and prevention of disease within families and across populations. This field has emerged from the integration of molecular biology into traditional epidemiological research. Molecular epidemiology improves our understanding of the pathogenesis of disease by identifying specific pathways, molecules and genes that influence the risk of developing disease. More broadly, it seeks to establish understanding of how the interactions between genetic traits and environmental exposures result in disease. History The term "molecular epidemiology" was first coined by Edwin D. Kilbourne in a 1973 article entitled "The molecular epidemiology of influenza". The term became more formalized with the formulation of the first book on ''Molecular Epidemiology: Principles and Prac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists help with study design, collection, and statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public health studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences. Major areas of epidemiological study include disease causation, transmission, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance, environmental epidemiology, forensic epidemiology, occupational epidemiology, screening, biomonitoring, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Pathology
Molecular pathology is an emerging discipline within pathology which is focused in the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of molecules within organs, tissues or bodily fluids. Molecular pathology shares some aspects of practice with both anatomic pathology and clinical pathology, molecular biology, biochemistry, proteomics and genetics, and is sometimes considered a "crossover" discipline. It is multi-disciplinary in nature and focuses mainly on the sub-microscopic aspects of disease. A key consideration is that more accurate diagnosis is possible when the diagnosis is based on both the morphologic changes in tissues (traditional anatomic pathology) and on molecular testing. It is a scientific discipline that encompasses the development of molecular and genetic approaches to the diagnosis and classification of human diseases, the design and validation of predictive biomarkers for treatment response and disease progression, the susceptibility of individuals of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists help with study design, collection, and statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public health studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences. Major areas of epidemiological study include disease causation, transmission, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance, environmental epidemiology, forensic epidemiology, occupational epidemiology, screening, biomonitoring, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Precision Medicine
Precision, precise or precisely may refer to: Science, and technology, and mathematics Mathematics and computing (general) * Accuracy and precision, measurement deviation from true value and its scatter * Significant figures, the number of digits that carry real information about a measurement * Precision and recall, in information retrieval: the proportion of relevant documents returned * Precision (computer science), a measure of the detail in which a quantity is expressed * Precision (statistics), a model parameter or a quantification of precision Computing products * Dell Precision, a line of Dell workstations * Precision Architecture, former name for PA-RISC, a reduced instruction set architecture developed by Hewlett-Packard * Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise Pangolin", Canonical's sixteenth release of Ubuntu Companies * Precision Air, an airline based in Tanzania * Precision Castparts Corp., a casting company based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States * Precision Drilling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Personalized Medicine
Personalized medicine, also referred to as precision medicine, is a medical model that separates people into different groups—with medical decisions, practices, interventions and/or products being tailored to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease. The terms personalized medicine, precision medicine, stratified medicine and P4 medicine are used interchangeably to describe this concept though some authors and organisations use these expressions separately to indicate particular nuances. While the tailoring of treatment to patients dates back at least to the time of Hippocrates, the term has risen in usage in recent years given the growth of new diagnostic and informatics approaches that provide understanding of the molecular basis of disease, particularly genomics. This provides a clear evidence base on which to stratify (group) related patients. Among the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering, an initiative sponsored by National Academy of En ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Medicine
Molecular medicine is a broad field, where physical, chemical, biological, bioinformatics and medical techniques are used to describe molecular structures and mechanisms, identify fundamental molecular and genetic errors of disease, and to develop molecular interventions to correct them. The molecular medicine perspective emphasizes cellular and molecular phenomena and interventions rather than the previous conceptual and observational focus on patients and their organs. History In November 1949, with the seminal paper, " Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease", in ''Science'' magazine, Linus Pauling, Harvey Itano and their collaborators laid the groundwork for establishing the field of molecular medicine. In 1956, Roger J. Williams wrote ''Biochemical Individuality'', a prescient book about genetics, prevention and treatment of disease on a molecular basis, and nutrition which is now variously referred to as individualized medicine and orthomolecular medicine. Another paper in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genomics
Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dimensional structural configuration. In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of ''individual'' genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of ''all'' of an organism's genes, their interrelations and influence on the organism. Genes may direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules. In turn, proteins make up body structures such as organs and tissues as well as control chemical reactions and carry signals between cells. Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes through uses of high throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to assemble and analyze the function and structure of entire genomes. Advances in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genome-wide Association Study
In genomics, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS), also known as whole genome association study (WGA study, or WGAS), is an observational study of a genome-wide set of Single-nucleotide polymorphism, genetic variants in different individuals to see if any variant is associated with a trait. GWA studies typically focus on associations between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and traits like major human diseases, but can equally be applied to any other genetic variants and any other organisms. When applied to human data, GWA studies compare the DNA of participants having varying phenotypes for a particular trait or disease. These participants may be people with a disease (cases) and similar people without the disease (controls), or they may be people with different phenotypes for a particular trait, for example blood pressure. This approach is known as phenotype-first, in which the participants are classified first by their clinical manifestation(s), as oppose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genetic Epidemiology
Genetic epidemiology is the study of the role of genetic factors in determining health and disease in families and in populations, and the interplay of such genetic factors with environmental factors. Genetic epidemiology seeks to derive a statistical and quantitative analysis of how genetics work in large groups. Definition The use of the term ''Genetic epidemiology'' emerged in the mid-1980s as a new scientific field. In formal language, genetic epidemiology was defined by Newton Morton, one of the pioneers of the field, as "a science which deals with the etiology, distribution, and control of disease in groups of relatives and with inherited causes of disease in populations". It is closely allied to both molecular epidemiology and statistical genetics, but these overlapping fields each have distinct emphases, societies and journals. One definition of the field closely follows that of behavior genetics, defining genetic epidemiology as "the scientific discipline that deals w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Risk Factor
In epidemiology, a risk factor or determinant is a variable associated with an increased risk of disease or infection. Due to a lack of harmonization across disciplines, determinant, in its more widely accepted scientific meaning, is often used as a synonym. The main difference lies in the realm of practice: medicine (clinical practice) versus public health. As an example from clinical practice, low ingestion of dietary sources of vitamin C is a known risk factor for developing scurvy. Specific to public health policy, a determinant is a health risk that is general, abstract, related to inequalities, and difficult for an individual to control. For example, poverty is known to be a determinant of an individual's standard of health. Correlation vs causation Risk factors or determinants are correlational and not necessarily causal, because correlation does not prove causation. For example, being young cannot be said to cause measles, but young people have a higher rate of meas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulsed-field Gel Electrophoresis
Pulsed field gel electrophoresis is a technique used for the separation of large DNA molecules by applying to a gel matrix an electric field that periodically changes direction. Historical background Standard gel electrophoresis techniques for separation of DNA molecules provided huge advantages for molecular biology research. However, it was unable to separate very large molecules of DNA effectively. DNA molecules larger than 15–20 kb migrating through a gel will essentially move together in a size-independent manner. At Columbia University in 1984, David C. Schwartz and Charles Cantor developed a variation on the standard protocol by introducing an alternating voltage gradient to improve the resolution of larger molecules. This technique became known as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The development of PFGE expanded the range of resolution for DNA fragments by as much as two orders of magnitude. Procedure The procedure for this technique is relatively similar t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gel Electrophoresis
Gel electrophoresis is a method for separation and analysis of biomacromolecules ( DNA, RNA, proteins, etc.) and their fragments, based on their size and charge. It is used in clinical chemistry to separate proteins by charge or size (IEF agarose, essentially size independent) and in biochemistry and molecular biology to separate a mixed population of DNA and RNA fragments by length, to estimate the size of DNA and RNA fragments or to separate proteins by charge. Nucleic acid molecules are separated by applying an electric field to move the negatively charged molecules through a matrix of agarose or other substances. Shorter molecules move faster and migrate farther than longer ones because shorter molecules migrate more easily through the pores of the gel. This phenomenon is called sieving. Proteins are separated by the charge in agarose because the pores of the gel are too small to sieve proteins. Gel electrophoresis can also be used for the separation of nanoparticles. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
