Epidemiology

Epidemiology is a branch of science that deals about pattern of health, illness and its associated factors all at its population level. Epidemiology is a corner stone for public health care research and provides information regarding evidence based medicine in order to identify the risk factors that are associated with disease. It also determines optimal treatment for clinical practice and assist with the aid of preventive medicine. The individual who practice epidemiology is referred as epidemiologists. It includes collection of data, design study, statistical analysis of data, result documentation and publication submission. Epidemiologists work other disciplines such as biology, social science, and biostatistics.

The word epidemiology is derived from Greek word ‘epi’ meaning upon, ‘demos’ meaning people and ‘logos’ meaning study. Epidemiology is used in zoological population study and is referred as epizoology or veterinary epidemiology and the use of epidemiology in plant populations is referred as botanical epidemiology. The difference between the term endemic and epidemic was first introduced by Hippocrates. Hippocrates is referred as father of epidemiology. He was the first individual to introduce the interaction of disease and environment. Endemic refers diseases with in a population and epidemic refers to disease among visited population. The epidemiology was introduced in the year 1802 by the Spanish physician scientist named Villalba. The condition called syndemic, study of interaction between diseases among populations is also briefed out b epidemiologists. The term epidemiology not only refers to epidemic disease but also disease in general at present days.

The study designs were framed by epidemiologists based on the observations from day to day experiments and they are categorized as follows.

• Descriptive
• Analytic
• Experimental

The epidemiologic studies reveal the unbiased relationship existing between exposures for instance biological agents, chemicals, stress, alcohol and smoking. Modern epidemiologists shall use informatics as modern tool.

Questions:

• What is epidemiology?
• What is the difference between endemic and epidemic?
• What are types of epidemiologic studies?