The science of epidemiology has matured significantly from the times of
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Κῷος, Hippokrátēs ho Kôios; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of ...
John Snow
John Snow (15 March 1813 – 16 June 1858) was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the so ...
. The techniques for gathering and analyzing epidemiological data vary depending on the type of disease being monitored but each study will have overarching similarities.
Outline of the process of an epidemiological study
# Establish that a problem exists
#* Full epidemiological studies are expensive and laborious undertakings. Before any study is started, a case must be made for the importance of the research.
# Confirm the homogeneity of the events
#* Any conclusions drawn from inhomogeneous cases will be suspicious. All events or occurrences of the disease must be true cases of the disease.
# Collect all the events
#* It is important to collect as much information as possible about each event in order to inspect a large number of possible risk factors. The events may be collected from varied methods of epidemiological study or from censuses or hospital records.
#* The events can be characterized by Incidence rates and
prevalence
In epidemiology, prevalence is the proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a disease or a risk factor such as smoking or seatbelt use) at a specific time. It is derived by comparing the number o ...
rates.
#* Often, occurrence of a single disease entity is set as an event.
#* Given inherent
heterogeneous
Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts often used in the sciences and statistics relating to the uniformity of a substance or organism. A material or image that is homogeneous is uniform in composition or character (i.e. color, shape, siz ...
nature of any given disease (i.e., the unique disease principle), a single disease entity may be treated as disease subtypes. This framework is well conceptualized in the interdisciplinary field of
molecular pathological epidemiology Molecular pathological epidemiology (MPE, also molecular pathologic epidemiology) is a discipline combining epidemiology and pathology. It is defined as "epidemiology of molecular pathology and heterogeneity of disease". Pathology and epidemiology s ...
(MPE).
# Characterize the events as to epidemiological factors
## Predisposing factors
##* Non-environmental factors that increase the likelihood of getting a disease. Genetic history, age, and gender are examples.
## Enabling/disabling factors
##* Factors relating to the environment that either increase or decrease the likelihood of disease. Exercise and good diet are examples of disabling factors. A weakened immune system and poor nutrition are examples of enabling factors.
## Precipitation factors
##* This factor is the most important in that it identifies the source of exposure. It may be a germ, toxin or gene.
## Reinforcing factors
##* These are factors that compound the likelihood of getting a disease. They may include repeated exposure or excessive
environmental stresses
Stress, either physiological, biological or psychological, is an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition. Stress is the body's method of reacting to a condition such as a threat, challenge or physical and psycholog ...
.
# Look for patterns and trends
#* Here one looks for similarities in the cases which may identify major risk factors for contracting the disease.
Epidemic curves
An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time.
Epidemics of infectious d ...
may be used to identify such risk factors.
# Formulate a hypothesis
#* If a trend has been observed in the cases, the researcher may postulate as to the nature of the relationship between the potential disease-causing agent and the disease.
# Test the hypothesis
#* Because epidemiological studies can rarely be conducted in a laboratory the results are often polluted by uncontrollable variations in the cases. This often makes the results difficult to interpret. Two methods have evolved to assess the strength of the relationship between the disease causing agent and the disease.
#*
Bradford-Hill Criteria are the current standards for epidemiological relationships. A relationship may fill all, some, or none of the criteria and still be true.
# Publish the results.
Measures
Epidemiologists are famous for their use of rates. Each measure serves to characterize the disease giving valuable information about contagiousness, incubation period, duration, and mortality of the disease.
Incidence rate
In epidemiology, incidence is a measure of the probability of occurrence of a given medical condition in a population within a specified period of time. Although sometimes loosely expressed simply as the number of new cases during some time peri ...
, where cases included are defined using a
case definition
In epidemiology, a clinical case definition, a clinical definition, or simply a case definition lists the clinical criteria by which public health professionals determine whether a person's illness is included as a ''case'' in an outbreak investiga ...
##
Hazard rate
Survival analysis is a branch of statistics for analyzing the expected duration of time until one event occurs, such as death in biological organisms and failure in mechanical systems. This topic is called reliability theory or reliability analysi ...
##
Cumulative incidence
In epidemiology, incidence is a measure of the probability of occurrence of a given medical condition in a population within a specified period of time. Although sometimes loosely expressed simply as the number of new cases during some time peri ...
#
Prevalence
In epidemiology, prevalence is the proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a disease or a risk factor such as smoking or seatbelt use) at a specific time. It is derived by comparing the number o ...
measures
##
Point prevalence
In epidemiology, prevalence is the proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a disease or a risk factor such as smoking or seatbelt use) at a specific time. It is derived by comparing the number o ...
Rate ratio In epidemiology, a rate ratio, sometimes called an incidence density ratio or incidence rate ratio, is a relative difference measure used to compare the incidence rates of events occurring at any given point in time.
It is defined as:
: \text = \ ...
##
Odds ratio
An odds ratio (OR) is a statistic that quantifies the strength of the association between two events, A and B. The odds ratio is defined as the ratio of the odds of A in the presence of B and the odds of A in the absence of B, or equivalently (due ...
##
Hazard ratio
In survival analysis, the hazard ratio (HR) is the ratio of the hazard rates corresponding to the conditions characterised by two distinct levels of a treatment variable of interest. For example, in a clinical study of a drug, the treated populati ...
Attributable risk In epidemiology, attributable risk or excess risk is a term synonymous to risk difference, that has also been used to denote attributable fraction among the exposed and attributable fraction for the population.
See also
* Population Impact Measure ...
Percent attributable risk In epidemiology, attributable fraction among the exposed (AFe) is the proportion of incidents in the exposed group that are attributable to the risk factor. The term attributable risk percent among the exposed is used if the fraction is expressed as ...
Virulence
Virulence is a pathogen's or microorganism's ability to cause damage to a host.
In most, especially in animal systems, virulence refers to the degree of damage caused by a microbe to its host. The pathogenicity of an organism—its ability to ca ...
and
Infectivity
In epidemiology, infectivity is the ability of a pathogen to establish an infection. More specifically, infectivity is a pathogen's capacity for horizontal transmission — that is, how frequently it spreads among hosts that are not in a parent ...
#
Mortality rate
Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of de ...
and
Morbidity rate
In epidemiology, prevalence is the proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a disease or a risk factor such as smoking or seatbelt use) at a specific time. It is derived by comparing the number o ...
#
Case fatality
In epidemiology, case fatality rate (CFR) – or sometimes more accurately case-fatality risk – is the proportion of people diagnosed with a certain disease, who end up dying of it. Unlike a disease's mortality rate, the CFR does not take int ...
#
Sensitivity (tests)
''Sensitivity'' and ''specificity'' mathematically describe the accuracy of a test which reports the presence or absence of a condition. Individuals for which the condition is satisfied are considered "positive" and those for which it is not are ...
and
Specificity (tests)
''Sensitivity'' and ''specificity'' mathematically describe the accuracy of a test which reports the presence or absence of a condition. Individuals for which the condition is satisfied are considered "positive" and those for which it is not are ...
Limitations
Epidemiological (and other observational) studies typically highlight ''associations'' between exposures and outcomes, rather than causation. While some consider this a limitation of observational research, epidemiological models of causation (e.g. Bradford Hill criteria) contend that an entire body of evidence is needed before determining if an association is truly causal. Moreover, many research questions are impossible to study in experimental settings, due to concerns around ethics and study validity. For example, the link between cigarette smoke and lung cancer was uncovered largely through observational research; however research ethics would certainly prohibit conducting a randomized trial of cigarette smoking once it had already been identified as a potential health threat.
See also
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References
External links
Epidemiologic.org Epidemiologic Inquiry online weblog for epidemiology researchers
Epidemiology Forum A discussion and forum community for epi analysis support and fostering questions, debates, and collaborations in epidemiology
The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford maintains an on-line "Toolbox" of
evidence-based medicine
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients". The aim of EBM is to integrate the experience of the clinician, the values of t ...