8^th Pathology and Infectious Disease Conference

Epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. The concerned areas of epidemiological study involve disease causation, transmission, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance, occupational epidemiology, screening, bio-monitoring etc. Epidemiologists employ a range of study designs from the observational to experimental and generally characterized as descriptive, analytic and experimental. In experimental studies, the epidemiologist is the one in control of all the factors entering in a certain case study. Any disease is caused by a chain or web consisting of many component causes. The cause can be differentiated as necessary, sufficient or probabilistic conditions, if a necessary condition can be identified and controlled, the harmful outcome can be avoided.